Merge after looking at eligible revs w/ merginfo command erroneously merging from branch base

Hi Subverison Users List:

We're using Subversion client and server 1.6.15 exact version: svn,
version 1.6.15 (r1038135)
We are doing the typical trunk and branch development outlined in the
svn book -- i.e. cut a branch, do devel on branch w/ multiple merges of
branch out to trunk, and finally do a re-integrate merge from branch
back to trunk and stop using the branch -- cut another one. We've been
very successful, but made a couple errors on one of our branches and
cannot seem to get back on track -- here's the details:

We cut a branch devel_bugatti at revision r11567, here's the commit log
from branch creation:

emalkowski_at_eric-lnx:/local/emalkowski/svn_merge$ svn log -v -r11567
svn://mmi-data/node_controller
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r11567 | monorato | 2012-04-26 16:06:04 -0400 (Thu, 26 Apr 2012) | 1 line
Changed paths:
    A /node_controller/branches/devel_bugatti (from
/node_controller/trunk:11566)

So devel continued on branch and trunk and we did mess up on some merges
from trunk to branch where the error was that the svn:mergeinfo property
was NOT committed on two trunk to branch merges. So it went as follows:

- One merge of trunk to branch done correct where the mergeinfo was
committed after the merge.
- Second merge trunk to branch, developer committed all merged files,
but missed commit of svn:mergeinfo prop update on devel_bugatti dir
- Third merge of trunk to branch, developer missed svn:mergeinfo again,
didn't have any real problems with conflicts and branch devel is now done.

I attempted a merge from trunk to branch to prepare for branch retire
and it keeps merging from branch creation r11567 to the HEAD of trunk --
this results in tree conflicts for files/dirs added on trunk, (that live
on branch due to previous untracked merges w/o mergeinfo) and it leads
to file conflicts / trying to merge more than it should.

So to try and fix this, I did a propedit on the dir devel_bugatti with
the mergeinfo property to set the range from 11567 to 12199 which by
examining logs from trunk and branch 12199 is the last thing committed
to the trunk that was already merged to the branch. The idea is to
merge 12199 to HEAD changes on trunk to branch to only pick up what's
changed on trunk since most recent merge that missed mergeinfo... The
commands that show what is merged from trunk to branch already and what
is eligible look totally right (evidence changing mergeinfo range to
11567-12199 should work) -- but when doing the merge, it still goes back
to when the branch was created and doesn't seem to use the svn:merginfo
data!!! Anyone have any idea why the merge command would behave
different than what eligible says would be merged? I'm going to start
losing sleep over this any ideas greatly appreciated:

emalkowski_at_eric-lnx:/local/emalkowski/svn_merge/devel_bugatti$ svn
proplist -v .
Properties on '.':
   svn:mergeinfo
     /node_controller/branches/devel:1321-1564
     /node_controller/branches/devel_delorean:11566-12027
     /node_controller/branches/devel_ducati:1566-11563
     /node_controller/branches/devel_emalkowski:1326-1449
     /node_controller/branches/devel_monorato:1324-1451
     /node_controller/branches/devel_rblack:1325-1456
     /node_controller/branches/devel_rblack_bugatti_mpid:12091-12147
     /node_controller/trunk:11567-12199

The last line is the interesting one that is tracking trunk -- by the
way, before hand editing it, the 2nd number in the range was 12149 which
was the committed mergeinfo from the very first trunk to branch merge
before the two messed up ones were done (and mergeinfo stayed at 12149).

emalkowski_at_eric-lnx:/local/emalkowski/svn_merge/devel_bugatti$ svn
mergeinfo svn://mmi-data/node_controller/trunk
r11652
r11799
r11800
r12028
r12029
r12098
r12112
r12113
r12140
r12156
r12199

This looks right -- all stuff merged from from trunk to branch that's
done already, branch builds right etc., looking at what another merge
from trunk to branch should get us for revs from the trunk to bring out:

emalkowski_at_eric-lnx:/local/emalkowski/svn_merge/devel_bugatti$ svn
mergeinfo svn://mmi-data/node_controller/trunk --show-revs eligible
r12317
r12326
r12410
r12531
r12610
r12765
r12802
r13233
r13253
r13254

So we have 12317-13254 that are all of the stuff we want from the trunk
to be brought out to the branch. Here we go with the merge and the line
"Merging r11567 through r13260" is wrong!!! it should be merging some
revision > r12199 to r13254. r11567 is back to start of branch and the
tree and file conflicts ensue and I'm up at night!!!

emalkowski_at_eric-lnx:/local/emalkowski/svn_merge/devel_bugatti$ svn merge
svn://mmi-data/node_controller/trunk
--- Merging r11567 through r13260 into 'buildroot':

Now I can go and force it to merge a specific range since I know which
things should be merged from analyzing logs... and I can do that (and
tried it and no dir conflicts, it did reasonable file work) and commit
and let the tool update the mergeinfo for future stuff... but this
scares me that my eventual re-intregrate merge from branch to trunk will
be a disaster or even additional trunk to branch merges after my forced
range of changes to merge will be a problem. Does the tool do something
where it flags hand edited mergeinfo as invalid or something and hence
the reason is just thinks the trunk has never been merged to the branch
and goes back to r11567 ??? I've looked at this carefully and I'm stumped.

Thanks so much for any help.

--
Eric Malkowski
Linux guy since kernel 1.0.9 in 1994