On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 5:56 PM, Mike Meyer <mwm-keyword-svn.257b71_at_mired.org>
wrote:
> Does anyone else but me find the help provided with "svn help merge"
> to be missing a vital piece of information? Or at least that it's
> non-obvious?
>
> Here's the first explanation, the others are similar:
>
> merge: Apply the differences between two sources to a working copy path.
> 1. merge sourceURL1[@N] sourceURL2[@M] [WCPATH]
>
> 1. In the first form, the source URLs are specified at revisions
> N and M. These are the two sources to be compared. The revisions
> default to HEAD if omitted.
>
> Differences between two files have a *direction*, which isn't
> indicated here. The set of differences that turn oldfile into newfile
> are *different* from the set that turn newfile back into oldfile. The
> diff man page (at least on GNU/Linux) catches this:
>
> SYNOPSIS
> diff [options] from-file to-file
>
> Compare that to the merge command (on FreeBSD; I believe it's from the
> GNU reimplementation of rcs) states the direction of the diff that's
> going to generate the merges very clearly:
>
> merge [ options ] file1 file2 file3
> merge incorporates all changes that lead from file2 to file3 into
> file1.
>
> Perforces integrate help text is somewhat obfuscated, but the
> direction for the diff is still clear.
>
> p4 integrate [ options ] fromFile[revRange] toFile
> 'p4 integrate' stages change propagation from source files to target
> files,
>
>
> The subversion version (quoted above) doesn't state which direction
> the differences that are going to be applied go. Yes, the numbers 1
> and 2 give the right order, and the command line order is the same for
> them all. However, it'd be nice if the help text made this explicit.
i have to agree w/ you here. if im not mistaken the semantics on svn merge
are
svn merge [dest] [src]
based upon experimentation (boy i hope thats right otherwise im screwed on a
ton of merges ive done ;))
in fact i was just discussing this w/ a fellow developer the other day. the
whole direction thing and we pretty much covered exactly what you said. the
conversation was something along the lines of
"you know diffs have a direction to them..".
"yes, but svn help merge doesnt indicate what the direction is...".
"o,... LAME"
by the way, i like how you went whole-hog on your case; im convinced!
-nathan
Received on 2008-04-04 02:12:53 CEST