RE: svn merge issues after upgrading server from 1.4.3 to 1.6.6 - unexpected property changes (deleted svn:mergeinfo)

> We recently upgraded our subversion server software and are having major
> problems with merging after moving the subversion server from 1.4.2 to
> 1.6.6. I am asking the user community for any help they can give us.
>
> The details of the prior and current software versions are detailed at the
> end of this email.
>
> The problem we are having is with 'svn merge' with a workspace that was
> checked out using the subversion 1.4.2 server:

Eww... not sure how great an idea it is to use a pre 1.5 server with 1.5 and 1.6 clients. Although I'm not 100% sure of the ramifications... it could just be a performance issue and the client has to do more work to walk the tree of mergeinfo properties. Perhaps someone that knows a bit more about that issue will chime in here.

>
>   - cd <destination-branch-directory>
>   - svn merge -r revision1:revision2 SOURCE_SVN_URL .
>
> This results in many unrelated files are having their properties change,
> and many unrelated files being included in the merge. It makes it very
> difficult to verify that the merge was successful when many unrelated
> files are included.
>
> A small example:
>
> An attempt to merge one change from sw1.0 to sw2.0 branch.
> A folder called Docs contains files that have not been changed.
> An svn diff produces the following:
> % cd /data/source/branches/sw2.0
> % svn stat -q Docs/
>  M      Docs/WDS-RIS-Blueprint.odt
>  M      Docs/WDS-RIS-Script-Usage.odt
>

As you know a " M" (Space in first col M in second column) indicates that the properties where changed but not the file itself.

> % svn diff Docs/
>
> Property changes on: Docs/WDS-RIS-Blueprint.odt
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Deleted: svn:mergeinfo
>
>
> Property changes on: Docs/WDS-RIS-Script-Usage.odt
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Deleted: svn:mergeinfo

This shows that you do have mergeinfo on your files. So, at some time someone did a merge probably at the Docs level or directly to a file which added the mergeinfo. Now you are doing it at a higher folder level so the data is being elided. There's not really anything wrong here.

You might want to train your devs to always do merges at the same folder level to prevent all the merge data on child folders and files. If they weren't there then they wouldn't be elided.

> A mix of subversion clients have been in use, including 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6
> based clients. Those have not changed, and this behavior occurs even using
> a 1.6.9 client.

I assume it doesn't happen when you use a 1.4 client... since this version doesn't include the merge tracking functionality.

> Can anyone provide any guidance, clues, pointers, etc. to what we need to
> do to address this issue??

I think there is nothing you can do to address it. But, to solve your problem you may just want to pipe the output to grep (or something) and ignore files with a status of " M"

You might also want to upgrade your server... 1.4.x is pretty old and not supported with updates.

I hope this helps.. sorry AFAIK there is no magic answer to make this easier.

BOb
Received on 2010-03-25 20:04:09 CET