understanding merge cost

Hi all,

part of the argument for branching freely is that svn copies are
supposed to be cheap. But how about merges?

A) Slim branches to create a new tree in a website. She is
industrious and adds about 100MB content, all committed to her
branch as things grow.

B) Steve is not idle either, adding 50MB content to the trunk of the
project.

Now to my understanding of the book either during her development
on the branch or before merging her branch into trunk as the latest
Slim has to merge trunk revisions since branching off into her
branch and commit. Thus Steve's 50MB would be committed a
second time, now into Slim's branch.

Then Slim switches to trunk and merges her branch back into trunk
and commits. Thus Slim's 100MB would be committed a second
time, now into trunk.

Added up 150MB residing in the repository twice. Or is Subversion
aware that Steve's 50 origin in trunk and Slim's 100 origin in her
branch, making merge as cheap as svn copy is supposed to be? I
didn't find a word on this.

TIA

Jan Hendrik
---------------------------------------
Freedom quote:

     Obsessed by their hatred and floundering in illogicality,
     these dupes forget that the United States, acting in her
     own self-interest, is also acting in the interest of us Europeans
     and in the interests of many other countries,
     threatened, or already subverted and ruined, by terrorism.
               -- Jean-François Revel, Anti-Americanism (2002)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe_at_subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help_at_subversion.tigris.org
Received on 2008-08-10 12:55:43 CEST