Subversion merging, tree merge

Question

I need to merge changes from a branch back into trunk but want to continue work on the existing branch.

I was going to use a re-integrate merge but realised this is not suitable as I will need to recreate my branch etc which for a variety of reasons is not desirable.

What I really want to do is merge the current revisions in the branch down to head and then keep people working on their current working copies.

So my question is , can tree merge be used to solve this or do I have to reintegrate and recreate.

Answer 1

Merging changes from the branch to the trunk does not affect the branch at all. So you can carry on working in it afterwards with no problem.

You will need a working copy of the trunk, though, to perform the merge in.

Answer 2

You can merge the branch to the trunk and keep on working in the branch, without recreating the branch - that's not an issue.

For your own convenience, you should include the revision range of the merge operation in the commit message (during commit to trunk). That way it will be easy to perform another merge operation in the future, starting from where you ended with this merge.

Answer 3

As mentioned by Vicky, merging from a branch to trunk doesn't affect the branch, and people can continue to working in that branch. There's one caveat though: repeatedly merging from one branch to trunk used to be awkward in Subversion prior to version 1.5 -- manually noting down the revisions already merged, and making sure not to include those again.

Since version 1.5 Subversion has basic 'merge tracking' functionality. See SVN book: Advanced Merging for documentation on more advanced merge topics.