Two people adding the same file - can both versions be merged?

Hi svn gurus,

yesterday this issue here came up: Two developers have independently of each other started working on a to-be-added-to-svn file. One developer was first to add the file and was able to commit successfully. The second developer had no such luck. He added the file (containing his own changes) and of course the commit attempt failed because svn reported that the file already exists. So, in terms of SVN, no error occurred. However, the question that i was unable to answer in a satisfactory way was: Is it possible to merge the changes that the second developer had in his version of the file to the contents of the file that had already been added to the repo?

We resolved the issue by having the second developer first rename his file, then checkout the version that the first developer had added and then using local wc merge tools (i.e. manual inspection in our case) to merge the changes of developer 2 with the changes of developer 1.

Is there any other, more automated method of resolving such an issue?
Received on Tue May 8 08:56:49 2007