Merging renamed files. Bug? Feature Gap? Other?

This issue came up on
http://www.cmcrossroads.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,180/topic,68
423.msg74812#msg74812

Here's the post:
        "Two parallel branches exist (one may be doing rapid releases,
the other may be working on a major change that will take a while). In
one of the branches, files are refactored and the name of a file is
changed. What happens when one stream needs to merge into the other?
Does the tool know that the two are the same file and merge them, or are
they considered separate files and not merged?"

After a quick test, the answer appears to be 'considered separate files
and not merged'. In theory, this means work is lost.
1. Create trunk/foo.txt
2. svn copy trunk branch
3. commit changes to branch/foo.txt
4. commit changes to trunk/foo.txt (to force a merge conflict)
5. ren branch/foo.txt to branch/bar.txt
6. merge from branch to trunk.

In theory, trunk/foo.txt and branch/bar.txt are the same. (From a
developer point of view, and from an ancestry point of view.)

In reality, subversion sees them as separate objects, so svn merge will
      A bar.txt
        D foo.txt
Since trunk/foo.txt gets deleted, any changes made to trunk/foo.txt are
lost. The trunk/foo.txt is not merged with trunk/bar.txt, even though
foo.txt is the ancestor of bar.txt.

Am I correct in how I stated this? And is this a bug or a feature? I'm
starting to get a queasy feeling about this scenario. Is it worth
worrying about?

*****

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Received on Thu Oct 5 20:08:20 2006