Can subversion track structural changes? In different copies? And merge them?

Hi,

   please consider the following scenario. A file in trunk is renamed,
but in a branch changes to the same file are also made.
Here in more detail:

   One developer adds "a.c" in the trunk and commits (r1). Another
developer needs to make a fix to "a.c" and creates a branch "fixing"
(r2), checks it out, marks the start with a tag "start-fixing" (r3) and
also marks the end with "stop-fixing" (r5). Between those tags he
changes the contents of "a.c" in the branch and commits (r4).

   At the same time somebody changes the name of "a.c" to "b.c" in the
trunk and commits (r6).

   So how to get the changes from the branch"fixing" back to the trunk?
I tried to merge from the HEAD of trunk and branch "fixing". That
resulted in an error that "a.c" is not known. I am not sure why this is,
as svn knows from what point on the branch was created, doesn't it?

   I then tried to check out a new working copy of the trunk with (r1),
i.e. before the new branch "fixing" was created. I then merged
start-fixing and stop-fixing in the trunk ("svn merge [..]start-fixing
stop-fixing[..] .").
That worked ok. The changes from the "fixing" branch are now in my local
copy, but I still need the remaining trunk changes. So I tried to merge
with HEAD, also tried to get to the HEAD by using update. Both didn't
work as expected and I have "a.c" and "b.c".

   What is the proper way to do that or can't I track structural changes
in subversion, when using more than the trunk?

   I am really at a loss here, can somebody open my eyes please? ;-)

Cheers,
Mariano

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Received on Thu Sep 7 10:10:18 2006