Stefan Sperling wrote: [...] > > 2) Subversion should provide merge tools for dealing with xml or latex > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > > XML and LaTeX both is not purely linebased. One item may span multiple > > rows and using the usual merge algorithm often (I say often, though I've > > never tried to merge xml or latex files) gives us the wrong result. > > Since atleast xml-files are very common I'm suspecting there is a use > > case for a merge tool. > > Subversion does not care about content. > IMO This project should rather be about making an external merge tool > that integrates nicely with svn.
A wide range of not-too-bad merge tools already exists. We have some basic support, and what we should be doing is making Subversion integrate more nicely with them. There's room for improvement in several directions [1]. This group of enhancements needs a bit of vision and planning before it's ready for a keen programmer to implement it. - Julian [1] Off the top of my head: automatically invoke an appropriate merge tool per content type (by user-defined rules or something); support for merging properties as well as file content; easier customizing; ability to merge files that Subversion currently thinks are "binary and therefore not to be merged"; providing more informative file names to the merge tool (rather than like "/tmp/temp123.tmp").
