Re: Reintegrate merging with sparse checkouts

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Johan Corveleyn <jcorvel_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> [ Redirecting back to the list -- please always use "reply all" to
> keep the discussion on the list. More below ... ]

Sorry about that... see below.

>
> On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 3:54 PM, Brian Neal <bgneal_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 5:15 AM, Johan Corveleyn <jcorvel_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 9:48 PM, Brian Neal <bgneal_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hello -
>>>>
>>>> My question is basically the same as this one:
>>>>
>>>> http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2010-04/0097.shtml
>>>>
>>>> We are forced to use an unwieldy and inconvenient directory structure.
>>>> Spare checkouts are a big help to us. But it seems that (in the few
>>>> times I have tried) to reintegrate a feature branch to trunk it has
>>>> failed if either of the working copies are sparse. I believe I
>>>> understand why this is; when you merge from trunk to your branch, the
>>>> merge info cannot get applied to the directories you have omitted from
>>>> your branch working copy. And when you finally go to reintegrate your
>>>> branch back to trunk, the reintegrate fails because SVN sees you have
>>>> not applied all the changes to certain directories.
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps I have done this wrong. If I have the same sparse directory
>>>> structures in my trunk & branch working copies (i.e. I made them
>>>> sparse in exactly the same way), should the reintegrate merge work?
>>>>
>>>> Otherwise is there a way to tell SVN that the directories I omitted
>>>> from my working copies are irrelevant and do not need to be merged?
>>>
>>> Which version of svn did you use (client-side)? What do you mean by "failed"?
>>
>> SVN 1.7.4.
>>
>> "Failed" as in the reintegrate merge back to trunk was prevented from
>> happening. I regret not writing down the error message, but the gist
>> of it was SVN could not find merge info on the directories I did not
>> have in my sparse working copies. To work around it, we either have to
>> reintegrate merge sub-directories multiple times, or just remove the
>> --reintegrate flag and deal with the less than ideal results (tree
>> conflicts).
>>
>> When I get some time I will try to come up with a toy example that
>> reproduces the issue.
>
> Yes, that would be very useful.

I was able to reproduce the issue, please see the attached
sparse-merge.txt and I captured the output and error that I see in the
attached file out.txt. (Note that I had to rename sparse-merge.bat to
sparse-merge.txt before Gmail would send it).

I am using SVN 1.7.4 on Windows XP.

The high level description of what is going on in the script is:

1. Create a repo using your sample greek tree.
2. Make a sparse working copy of trunk, omitting the A\B directory (trunk_wc)
3. Copy trunk to a feature branch.
4. Make a sparse working copy of the feature branch (omitting A\B -- branch_wc)
5. Make a full working copy of trunk (trunk_b_wc).
6. Now change files in all three working copies and commit (but don't
create conflicts). In particular, in trunk_b_wc, change a file under
A\B.
7. Merge trunk to the feature branch.
8. Reintegrate merge the feature branch back to trunk.
9. Observe that the merge fails, presumably because the changes to A\B
never made it to the feature branch.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

-BN