Question about how to handle long running branch that needs trunk updates

I apologize ahead of time if this is in a FAQ somewhere. If so, please let me know where I can find it as I imagine this has come up before since there is an issue for it.

As it appears that issue 2897 (http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2897) [reflective merging] will not be going out with Subversion 1.5, I thought I would ask if there was a way to handle the situation below (because we were planning on using reflective merging for this):

We have long running projects (anywhere from 1 to 6 months for example) that add to the trunk code when they are done. While they are under development they typically need updates from the trunk code so that they can continue working properly with external systems and/or to get features or bug fixes that they also need to integrate with or to function properly. The reason that they are typically in a branch is that they may be aborted and/or they may take a long develop/test cycle that living in the trunk would not allow (since we release trunk every two weeks with bug fixes and new projects).

How do people handle conditions like this?

If reflective merging was supported, here is how we would have done this:

1) Branch from trunk to create project branch proj1
2) Commit some changes in trunk and merge them to proj1
3) Commit some work to proj1
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 a couple of times (in any order and number of times)
5) (THIS IS THE BIT NOT CURRENTLY SUPPORTED) The project is complete, so merge proj1 back to trunk

This is basically what (if I understand it correctly) issue 2897 will allow you to do.

Thanks!
Allen
       
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Received on 2008-02-19 21:24:35 CET