Where happens merging in SVN - on the client or server?

Question

At my company we evaluate working with feature branches.

We want to use mergeinfo to track merging.

I have issues in some of our tested projects where merging a trunk that has only little changes into branch leads to lots of changed files because of the changed mergeinfo.

I read that this behaviour improved between version 1.5 and 1.6.

Does this mean if I update the SVN - server from 1.5.6 to 1.6 I can expext some improvements when merging, or does this depend on the client (which is 1.6.11)?

Answer 1

Yes, you will see some improvements when you upgrade your server to 1.6.

If you are only merging entire branches (rather than individual files between branches), you can minimize the number of files that change only in their svn:mergeinfo properties by deleting mergeinfo information on those files, e.g.:

$ cd branch1
$ svn propdel -R svn:mergeinfo *
$ svn ci -m'remove tracking mergeinfo on files inside the branch -- only tracked at the branch level now'

Now when you merge branches, you will only see the svn:mergeinfo property updated on the directory at the highest level of the branch, which is all you should need.