Should Subversion allow a merge on top of a file that already contains an unresolved conflict? Run the script below to set up the scenario.
The first merge introduces a conflict, the second merge contains incoming changes to the conflicting section. The second merge is applied successfully to the working copy. However, as the working copy is still in conflict, when you come to resolve it, the contributors overwrite the later changes. In the example, the contributors are foo.c.working, foo.c.merge-right.r4 and foo.c.merge-left.r3. When the merge is completed the foo.c that had contained the changes from the second merge are overwritten. I think it's a misfeature that svn allows a merge into a file that already contains conflicts, especially given that multiple pass merges are broken up for entirely the reason that there is no reliable way to merge a change into a file that already contains conflicts. It may seem unlikely that someone would do a second merge when there is already conflicts, however this is the case when you pick two separate source revisions to merge in Tortoise, and then choose to postone resolving all conflicts - you may not realise there is a conflict in the first revision as subsequent revisions may be merged successfully. Apparently it is documented that you must resolve interactively when cherrypicking, however I can't find this. Nevertheless, imho the behaviour in this scenario should be the same as when merging a non-contiguous range of revisions, ie you are forced to resolve conflicts after each sub-range. Grateful for any opinions on this... and if this is a reported bug, what's the ID please. cheers, jamie __SCRIPT__ @rem config SET REPO_PATH=file:///c:/tmp/TestMergeIssue/repo rm -rf wc repo svnadmin create repo svn co %REPO_PATH% wc pushd wc mkdir trunk branches echo 1 >> trunk\foo.c echo 2 >> trunk\foo.c echo 3 >> trunk\foo.c echo 4 >> trunk\foo.c echo 5 >> trunk\foo.c echo 6 >> trunk\foo.c echo 7 >> trunk\foo.c echo 8 >> trunk\foo.c echo 9 >> trunk\foo.c svn add trunk branches svn commit -m "1" svn cp trunk branches/1.0 svn commit -m "2" @rem change 2nd line on trunk perl -pi.bak -e "s/2/B trunk/" trunk/foo.c svn commit -m "3" trunk/foo.c @rem add lines on branch perl -pi.bak -e "s/2/A.ny\nB.ny\nC.ny\nD.ny/" branches/1.0/foo.c svn commit -m "4" branches/1.0/foo.c @rem this will conflict now @rem modify two of the lines on branch perl -pi.bak -e "s/C.ny/C/" branches/1.0/foo.c perl -pi.bak -e "s/D.ny/D/" branches/1.0/foo.c svn commit -m "5" branches/1.0/foo.c pushd trunk svn merge --accept postpone -c 4 ^^/branches/1.0 svn merge --accept postpone -c 5 ^^/branches/1.0 popd popd =============================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html ===============================================================================
