[fetchmail-devel] quick overview of branching and tagging in SVN [was: Re: r3948 - trunk]

[Graham W. <gr...@mk...>]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 01:38:34PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
> OK, I will figure how to branch and merge in Subversion and to that next
> time for "sweeping" changes that aren't self-contained in a single
> patch-set. It's only that I am not particularly fond of branches as most
> of my development efforts are still CVS-based, and CVS's branch handling
> is known to be inferior to SVN.

Branching and tagging is done by the same operation in Subversion. For
example, if I wanted to create Debian branch for fetchmail, I could do
the following (this doesn't modify your working copy):

  $ scp https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/trunk \
        https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/branches/debian \
        -m "Create a Debian branch of fetchmail."

You can then switch your working copy of fetchmail to the Debian branch
by doing the following:

  $ cd /path/to/my/wc
  $ svn switch https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/branches/debian

Switching back to the trunk is just as easy:

  $ cd /path/to/my/wc
  $ svn switch https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/branches/debian

To see what branch your working on current, use the info subcommand in
the toplevel of your of your working copy:

  $ pwd
  /path/to/my/wc
  $ svn info
  Path: .
  URL: https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/trunk
  Repository UUID: 6bd12b38-53dc-0310-98db-d94f1ca4f90c
  Revision: 4001
  Node Kind: directory
  Schedule: normal
  Last Changed Author: m-a
  Last Changed Rev: 4001
  Last Changed Date: 2004-11-10 16:57:00 -0600 (Wed, 10 Nov 2004)
  Properties Last Updated: 2004-08-08 03:22:17 -0500 (Sun, 08 Aug 2004)

You can make checkins on a branch the same way you would on the trunk,
as long as the info subcommand shows the branch, not the trunk.

Tagging is done the same way as branching, except you copy to the tags
directory, not the branhes directory, and you never checkin anything on
a tag.

The other important operation besides branching is merging. To merge the
changes from the branch (make sure you are on the trunk, and not a
branch):

  $ cd /path/to/my/wc
  $ svn merge https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/trunk \
              https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/branches/debian

(Note that this wouldn't make sense for the Debian branch, but this is
just an example.)

Check the output for any lines that start with C, which means that there
was a conflict in the merge. Open the file, and search for the conflict
markers, and resolve the conflict. Then do:

  $ svn resolved conflict.c

Then you have to checkin the merged changes the same way you would
normally checkin changes.

To see what would be merged before doing the merge operation:

  $ svn diff https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/trunk \
             https://decoy.wox.org/svn/fetchmail/branches/debian

The diff and merge subcommands are pretty similar, except the diff
subcommand outputs the differences, while the merge subcommands applies
them to your working copy.

I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has (assuming I can, of
course :).

-- 
gram