Re: why is svn so useless at merge.

Marc Haisenko wrote:
> Using such a flamebaiting subject and language won't get you anywhere...
>
I assure you this isn't a real criticism. I value svn very highly.

On the other hand, error messages which don't reveal enough information are
pretty useless.

My svn repository is fine. I have only used svn to update it (how else) and now
svn says it cannot perform a merge because svn has locked a local repository
folder when trying to apply changes from one branch to another.

I wouldn't mind so much if it were just to say can't do this because "...." or
skipping this because "....", but just halting after an operation which takes
15-20 minutes and leaves the working repository in a partially changed state is
pretty poor behaviour for a source code tool. I suppose there is some sequence
of operations in the change set which causes svn to get into a mess. Even if I
knew what was wrong I cannot change the changes that have already been made or
influence which changes merge takes into account.

In my opionion this makes the merge subcommand less than optimal.

Now I understand that I can get the actual differences out using svn diff, but I
cannot seem to find the svn patch command so my normal handomatic escape route
doesn't seem to be available.

I see this "working repository folder locked" error has been mentioned several
times, but there seems to be no concensus as to what has gone wrong to produce it.

I get the impression I will be doing some diffing and patching.

-- 
Robin Becker
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