No warning when merging a file when the target file is missing.

[Erik Hemdal <er...@comprehensivepower.com>]

Problem:  We use TortoiseSVN (TSVN) as our SVN client.  We found a
surprising issue, which I can reproduce with the native SVN client.  So I'm
posting here for advice about what we're doing wrong to encounter this
issue.

Problem:  TSVN is silent when I try to merge a file from trunk to a branch
where the target file has been deleted.  It doesn't give any message about
the file in its list of changes until the branch is merged back to trunk.  I
see the same behavior when I try the test using the native SVN client.

What I expected:  TSVN shows a message like "Skipped missing target", or
adds the file on the target branch, or shows a conflict.  In cases where I
am doing a range-of-revisions merge, I will see a "Skipped missing target"
message for files that can't be merged.

Questions:  Is this an ambiguous case, or a user error?  Should I have
expected TSVN to warn at R105 in the test case below?  
Is there a reliable way to avoid this, other than due diligence when
merging?

Test case:

Trunk at R100 contains fileA, fileB, fileC.

R101: Create Branch by copying from trunk. 
R102: Add a line to fileA on Trunk. 
R103: Delete fileC on Branch. 
R104: Add a line to fileB on Branch. 
R105: Merge R101-102 from trunk into Branch. I see the change to fileA. TSVN
is silent about the deleted file.
R106: Merge changes from HEAD of trunk to HEAD of Branch into trunk.  I see
that the added line appears in fileB, and fileC is removed.

At R106, trunk and Branch are identical.  But I expected to see a "Skipped
missing target" message at R105, and I did not.

Research:

In the archives, I found

http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2006-03/0918.shtml

which sounds like a related problem that was repaired in SVN 1.4, and

http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2006-01/0325.shtml

which seems to suggest that this might be a limitation concerning renames as
"delete, then add".

I'll appreciate any advice.  Thanks!   Erik



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org