What happens if I don't use the --Reintegrate option in Subversion 1.5?

Question

I thought I had figured out everything I needed to know about Subversion 1.5 and was happily merging between my feature branches and the trunk.

Then I realized I've not been doing what I thought I had.

I have not been using the --reintegrate parameter when merging back to the trunk from a feature branch.

Specifically I use TortoiseSVN 1.5.3 and I had always been choosing the 1st Merge option "Merge a range of revisions" without specifying a range.

This I understood to be correct when merging from the trunk to the branch but I also understood that I should have used the --reintegrate parameter when merging the other way.

Instead I have been choosing the 2st option when merging in either direction, obviously picking the opposing url in each case.

It did seem to process the correct files in each case...

So what (if anything) have I screwed up ?

Answer 1

This blog post explains what might go wrong, why --reintegrate was created, and what it actually does.

Merging from the feature branch back to trunk without using --reintegrate will most likely only have caused you some extra conflicts, as described in the post