Mike remarked that svn:mergeinfo should never have been user-visible... So: what if we made svn_property_kind(NULL, SVN_PROP_MERGEINFO) return a value other than svn_prop_regular_kind, at least when both server and client were ≥1.7? Would that have any useful side-effects?
[I suspect it might, but want to hear others' thoughts before laying out my own.]