SVN Merge silently fails when parent directory is unreadable

["Stein, Ruben" <ru...@mevis.fraunhofer.de>]

Hello,

I have the problem that I cannot execute any merge operation since the repository owner restricted access rights of some parent folders. The ugly part about this is, that merge silently fails. It just does nothing and pretends that the command was successful. I first discovered this when I tried to do a reverse-merge (undo) of the latest revision I just committed. See the example output below. I added "--ignore-ancestry" to demonstrate that this is not about a problem in my working copy. Merge just quits, gives no error and the working copy is untouched (empty svn st output). But there is a diff it should apply. Entering the same revision to diff shows a valid patch.

D:\source>svn merge -c -192211 --ignore-ancestry -v .
--- Merging

D:\source>echo %ERRORLEVEL%
0

D:\source>svn st

D:\source >svn diff -c -192211 .
Index: SomeFile.cpp
===================================================================
--- SomeFile.cpp        (revision 192211)
+++ SomeFile.cpp        (revision 192210)
@@ -3854,17 +3854,32 @@
[...]

I even checked the mergeinfos for that folder to be sure there is nothing marked as already merged. There was nothing interesting in the output:
svn propget svn:mergeinfo --show-inherited-props

On a colleagues machine who still had full access rights, the operation succeeded - applying the changes from the diff as expected. So my conclusion so far is, that merge fails since access to a parent directory in the repo is restricted. See the following description of the rights situation:

/repo-root => forbidden
/repo-root/source => allowed

I have the following questions:
* Is it by design, that merge cannot cope with read-restricted parent directories? Or should this work?
* Is it a bug, that it simply quits without doing anything? I had expected at least an error message that the operation failed.

Best Regards
Ruben

AW: SVN Merge silently fails when parent directory is unreadable

["Stein, Ruben" <ru...@mevis.fraunhofer.de>]

Hello,

I just want to add, that we now found a solution by allowing read access to the repository root for all users. This helps to get the merge command back on track, it correctly applies the expected diffs to the WC. It seems to have no problem with the fact that the directories on the second level still have access restrictions.

Situation now:
/repo-root => allowed
/repo-root/branches => forbidden
/repo-root/branches/source => allowed

Best Regards
Ruben

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Stein, Ruben [mailto:ruben.stein@mevis.fraunhofer.de]
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 25. März 2015 16:05
> An: users@subversion.apache.org
> Betreff: SVN Merge silently fails when parent directory is unreadable
> [..]
> I have the problem that I cannot execute any merge operation since the
> repository owner restricted access rights of some parent folders. 
> [..]