Hopw you will be fine and good.
Can anyone tell me how to merge from one branch to another.
For Example: We have two branches, DEV and INT and i want to merge from DEV to INT.
What is the best way to do this.
Second, is it necessary to lock the DEV branch before merging process is to be started?
Kindly guide me to some article/link/book if possible.
Thanks.
I found this visual guide very useful when I was starting out with such things http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-guide-to-version-control/ (scroll down for branch/merge help).
Make sure you understand fully the meaning of merging from and merging to as it can get easily confused.
You should read the Subversion documentation at http://svnbook.red-bean.com
Merge is a kind of misnomer for the operation that you actually perform. The operation really is applying a diff (between a 'From' revision and a 'To' revision) into your working copy.
In your case you want a diff between a revision R1 and revision R2 of DEV branch.
Once you have the diff applied you would see a list of files added/updated/delete and perhaps with conflicts (text and/or tree). Resolve any conflicts and then commit it to the INT. I'm assuming you have your working copy 'synchronized' to INT.
Not sure if you're using any IDEs (like Eclipse), they would make this process somewhat easier, especially comparing the diffs. TortoiseSVN works great too.