frequently merge changes between branch and trunk?

Question

My team and I are using svn branches for the first time. Before, we use to work only from the trunk.

Over the past 2 weeks, we've been refactoring and developing new code against our branch. But during that time, another developer has been making bug fixes to code in the trunk and deploying it to the production server. We would like to frequently "update" our branch with changes from the trunk to make sure we get the latest fixes. But the problem is that we're making drastic changes to our branch, and many files have been renamed. I have a feeling every "update" we do on our branch that takes changes from trunk will cause a conflict, unless we some how get subversion to recognise that fileA.html in trunk is really fileB.html in branch.

Am I using subversion branches correctly? Am I using the word "update" correctly? Are frequent "updates" in branch advisable?

Answer 1

Though you didn't explicitly mention it, I'd like to suggest that you be running at least SVN 1.5 so that you have the benefit of the merging enhancements made between 1.4 and 1.5.

See especially "svn mergeinfo":
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.branchmerge.basicmerging.html#svn.branchmerge.basicmerging.mergeinfo

If you haven't already upgraded to SVN 1.5 or 1.6, these changes will make what you're doing much easier.