Re: [merge-tracking] Merge all changesets that are completely automatic

Justin Johnson wrote:
> Where I work there are a lot of branches being
> maintained at the same time, and the developers want to be able to
> schedule a cron job that will automatically merge any changesets that
> don't require user intervention during the merge and then checkin the
> results of the merge.

You _will_ have broken branches with this scheme, I can guarantee it.
As long as there are *no* conflicts, you won't have any problems, but it
is not possible to automatically merge changesets in a way that will
always produce stable code. A conflict for one branch is much more
likely to be a conflict in other similar brances.

You are much more likely to have good results by assigning a rotating
"merge manager" role. Most of the time, the job will be very routine
(which is why you should share the load). However, for those times when
everything goes pear-shaped, you will be much happier having a human
being instead of a cron job.

You may also want to compare and contrast svnmerge.py with SVK's merging
(the latter of which is has been in use for a longer time and could be
considered to be more mature).

My 2 cents

John

-- 
John Peacock
Director of Information Research and Technology
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite H
Lanham, MD  20706
301-459-3366 x.5010
fax 301-429-5748
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