No warning when merging a file when the target file is missing.

Problem: We use TortoiseSVN (TSVN) as our SVN client. We found a
surprising issue, which I can reproduce with the native SVN client. So I'm
posting here for advice about what we're doing wrong to encounter this
issue.

Problem: TSVN is silent when I try to merge a file from trunk to a branch
where the target file has been deleted. It doesn't give any message about
the file in its list of changes until the branch is merged back to trunk. I
see the same behavior when I try the test using the native SVN client.

What I expected: TSVN shows a message like "Skipped missing target", or
adds the file on the target branch, or shows a conflict. In cases where I
am doing a range-of-revisions merge, I will see a "Skipped missing target"
message for files that can't be merged.

Questions: Is this an ambiguous case, or a user error? Should I have
expected TSVN to warn at R105 in the test case below?
Is there a reliable way to avoid this, other than due diligence when
merging?

Test case:

Trunk at R100 contains fileA, fileB, fileC.

R101: Create Branch by copying from trunk.
R102: Add a line to fileA on Trunk.
R103: Delete fileC on Branch.
R104: Add a line to fileB on Branch.
R105: Merge R101-102 from trunk into Branch. I see the change to fileA. TSVN
is silent about the deleted file.
R106: Merge changes from HEAD of trunk to HEAD of Branch into trunk. I see
that the added line appears in fileB, and fileC is removed.

At R106, trunk and Branch are identical. But I expected to see a "Skipped
missing target" message at R105, and I did not.

Research:

In the archives, I found

http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2006-03/0918.shtml

which sounds like a related problem that was repaired in SVN 1.4, and

http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2006-01/0325.shtml

which seems to suggest that this might be a limitation concerning renames as
"delete, then add".

I'll appreciate any advice. Thanks! Erik

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Received on 2008-10-23 19:59:17 CEST