Subversion Merging branch into trunk when trunk is outdated

Question

A branch has become the most current line of development so the trunk was outdated. When merging the branch back into trunk through "Merge two different trees", none of the history of the changes in the branch are moved to the trunk. I would like to get rid of the branch, since I need to start a new branch for some modifications that will take some time. Is this the normal behavior or did I miss something?

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.

Thanks! Miguel

Answer 1

The whole point of branching is to get a copy of the repository that can be pushed forward while the trunk remains stable, and therefore 'outdated'. One might argue that if the branch really becomes the primary, then 'you're doing it wrong'.

Semantics aside though, I see one possible solution to your problem.

Merge the trunk into the branch, instead of the otherway around. This may prove difficult depending on what changes may have been made into the trunk that were not pro-actively merged into the branch. And then, in the end, remove /trunk, and do an SVN copy of the branch to /trunk. Remember that 'branching' in SVN is really just a copy of whatever you are branching, history included. If you are unsure of how this might progress, you could do an svndump of the repo and test it out on a temporary repository.