On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 01:15:30PM +0000, Julian Foad wrote: > As many of you are aware I've been looking at improving merge in > various ways. I'd like to ask for feedback at this stage on the Wiki > page <http://wiki.apache.org/subversion/SymmetricMerge> (renamed from > SvnMergeTheory). The essential point is that it looks like we can > relatively easily enhance Subversion so that a plain 'merge' command > will act as either 'sync' or 'reintegrate' automatically, depending on > the history of the branch, and furthermore will work better than > either of them in the scenario of continuing work on a branch after a > reintegrate. > > How much of what I've written makes sense? I know it could do with > much more detailed worked examples, with concrete Subversion commands > and output to prove the connection between theory and practice.
I've just reread it and I really like what you've written. I'm very happy to see this result. It is a great answer to the seemingly fruitless discussions about the weaknesses of Subversion's merge feature during the past year. While I am still afraid of unforeseen issues we might face when trying to move forward with this proposal, it definitely points us into a much better direction than the status quo and is worth pursuing. My only question would be when will you try to work out the detailed algorithm to find a good merge base so we can try to implement this? :) It seems to be a rather simple change on the surface. I'd love to see --reintegrate become obsolete in 1.8. But maybe we will need more time to get it working?
