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POCan Subversion properly handle merges in both directions (trunk <-> branch)?
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  1. POCan Subversion properly handle merges in both directions (trunk <-> branch)?
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    copied!<p>As far as I understand, the most common (and recommended) way to handle branching &amp; merging in Subversion is:</p> <ul> <li>create branch as a copy of trunk</li> <li>do disruptive development on branch, and regular development on trunk</li> <li>While doing so, regularly merge changes trunk -> branch, to avoid the branch diverging too much. With merge tracking (<code>svn:mergeinfo</code>), I can just run <code>svn merge ^/trunk</code>, and SVN will automatically fetch all unmerged changes from trunk.</li> <li>Once the work on the branch is done, merge everything back (on trunk: <code>svn merge --reintegrate ^/branch/foo</code>), then discard branch.</li> </ul> <p>(described e.g. in the SVN book, chapter <a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.branchmerge.basicmerging.html" rel="nofollow">Basic Merging</a>).</p> <p>Now my problem: While this works well for "feature branches", one sometimes also needs "release branches", which represent shipping/about to ship versions.</p> <p>With release branches, in my experience merging has to happen in <em>both</em> directions:</p> <ul> <li>bug fixes from the release branch must be merged into trunk (branch -> trunk)</li> <li>but sometimes a bug fix from trunk (or even a new feature) is deemed critical for a release version (or an update to the release), and must therefore be merged trunk -> branch</li> </ul> <p>I have not found anything firm on how SVN and <code>svn:mergeinfo</code> will handle this. Can I merge in both directions ("bidirectional merge"), and still have svn keep track of merged revisions?</p> <p>Are there any pitfalls? Anything special to pay attention to?</p>
 

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