Subversion: How to merge only specific revisions into trunk when multiple consecutive changes are made in a branch?
Solution 1
The problem is that both svn
A
<<<<<<< .working
=======
B (unwanted change)
C (important bug fix)
>>>>>>> .merge-right.r341
and TortoiseSVN is treating the situation as 2-way merge. I've heard of the term 3-way merge, so I gave Beyond Compare a shot. With quick set up with TortoiseSVN, Edit Conflict now bring up the following screen. This is not perfect, since it's still requiring human intervention, but at least I can tell which changes are coming from where.
Solution 2
Merging only revisions 4,7, and 11-15 with svnmerge:
svnmerge.py merge -r4,7,11-15
And with regular svn:
svn merge -c4,7 -r10:15 http://.../branches/TRY-XX-Foo
Solution 3
Well to clarify a thing about merge is that it actually has 2 steps.
- Merge
- Commit
So that means that after your merge is done, you can do a manual diff against head and the other branch to make sure that the merge was correct. And if something was wrong with it, like in your case, you can manually fix it before the commit.
/Johan
Solution 4
In TortoiseSVN, you must only specify the revisions you want to merge. Unlike the command line client where you have to specify e.g. -r4:5 to merge the changes between r4 and r5, you only have to specify '5' as the revision number to merge in the TortoiseSVN merge dialog. If you're not sure, always use log dialog from the merge dialog and select the revisions you want to merge in that log dialog (then click OK and the selected revisions will automatically get set in the merge dialog).
As for resolving your conflict in TortoiseMerge: According to the screenshot in your question, TortoiseMerge shows you two conflicted lines (the ones shown as '????' in the bottom view). What you want is to include the change 'C' but not 'B'?
- left click on the first '???' line to select it, then right-click, choose 'use block from "mine"' from the context menu
- left click on the second '???' line to select it, then right-click, choose 'use block from "theirs"' from the context menu
- Click the save button (or File->Save)
- Optionally click on the "Mark as resolved" button
Solution 5
I believe you are including the revisions you want correctly, but the merge algorithm is failing to find the place to insert the wanted change and so including the line above it also. Here are the same steps but with a different set of changes, and I believe it works as you expected originally:
$ svnadmin create repo $ svn mkdir -m '' file://`pwd`/repo/trunk Committed revision 1. $ svn mkdir -m '' file://`pwd`/repo/branches Committed revision 2. $ svn co file://`pwd`/repo/trunk co.trunk Checked out revision 2. $ cat > co.trunk/test.txt << EOF > A > B > C > EOF $ svn add co.trunk/test.txt A co.trunk/test.txt $ svn commit -m '' co.trunk Adding co.trunk/test.txt Transmitting file data . Committed revision 3. $ svn copy -m '' file://`pwd`/repo/trunk file://`pwd`/repo/branches/testbr Committed revision 4. $ svn co file://`pwd`/repo/branches/testbr co.testbr A co.testbr/test.txt Checked out revision 4. $ cat > co.testbr/test.txt << EOF > A > A1 unwanted > B > C > EOF $ svn commit -m '' co.testbr Sending co.testbr/test.txt Transmitting file data . Committed revision 5. $ cat > co.testbr/test.txt << EOF > A > A1 unwanted > B > B1 wanted > C > EOF $ svn commit -m '' co.testbr Sending co.testbr/test.txt Transmitting file data . Committed revision 6. $ svn merge -r 5:6 file://`pwd`/repo/branches/testbr co.trunk --- Merging r6 into 'co.trunk': U co.trunk/test.txt $ cat co.trunk/test.txt A B B1 wanted C
Eugene Yokota
Hi, I'm Eugene (eed3si9n). I am a software engineer and an open source contributor mostly around Scala. As the core maintainer of sbt, a build tool used in Scala community, I like helping debug and explain sbt. Other projects I contribute to: scalaxb, an XML databinding tool for Scala (author) treehugger.scala (author) scopt/scopt (maintainer) Twitter: @eed3si9n Github: @eed3si9n
Updated on July 31, 2022Comments
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Eugene Yokota almost 2 years
I have been using TortoiseSVN, svn, and subclipse and I think I understand the basics, but there's one thing that's been bugging me for a while: Merging introduces unwanted code. Here's the steps.
trunk/test.txt@r2
. A test file was created with 'A' and a return:A [EOF]
branches/TRY-XX-Foo/test.txt@r3
. Branched out thetrunk
toTRY-XX-Foo
:A [EOF]
branches/TRY-XX-Foo/test.txt@r4
. Made an unwanted change inTRY-XX-Foo
and committed it:A B (unwanted change) [EOF]
branches/TRY-XX-Foo/test.txt@r5
. Made an important bug fix inTRY-XX-Foo
and committed it:A B (unwanted change) C (important bug fix) [EOF]
Now, I would like to merge only the important bug fix back to trunk. So, I run merge for revision
4:5
. What I end up in my working directory is a conflict.trunk/test.txt
:A <<<<<<< .working ======= B (unwanted change) C (important bug fix) >>>>>>> .merge-right.r5 [EOF]
Against my will, Subversion has now included "unwanted change" into the trunk code, and I need to weed them out manually. Is there a way to merge only specified revisions when multiple consecutive changes are made in the branch?
The part of the problem is that B (unwated change) is included in .merge-right and I can't tell the difference between which revision it came from. I usually use TortoiseMerge and here's how it looks.
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Eugene Yokota over 15 yearsRunning from command line still produced the same result as TortoiseSVN, causing conflict and pulling in unwanted changes.
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Eugene Yokota over 15 years4:5 means take the difference between 4 and 5 and apply it to the working directory. I've tried -c5 command line option, but the result is the same.
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orip over 15 yearsSorry, I guess I don't understand your scenario. Cherry-picking revisions to merge works just like I show (and evidently, like you tried), I'm not sure what's the problem.
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boutta over 15 yearsOrips answer should be right and give you the result you want. Maybe you didn't leave revision 5 out in your command-line statement. Then obviously you would pull the change into the merge.
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Ranger over 15 yearsUsing the subclipse merge view you can enable the original view which will get you the three way merge view. Check the top right corner.
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Eugene Yokota over 15 yearsUndoing is not an option since the unwanted changes in branches/TRY-XX-Foo/ represent half-baked features, not ready to get merged into trunk.
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boutta over 15 years@eed3si9n: I had a already formed branch, added a (unwanted) change to a file, then added a wanted change to the same file and did an svn merge -c$revision URL into the trunk of the project. Here $revision was the revision number of the wanted change. After the merge I got only the wanted change.
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boutta over 15 yearsI did everything on the command line only with a -c option because for the test I only added 2 further revisions as in your example.
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guerda over 15 yearsPlease put this information in your question, because this is an answer.
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Eugene Yokota over 15 years@guerda, I am posting the use of 3-way merge tool as an answer.
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Eugene Yokota over 15 yearsFirst of all, thank you for the great tool. I've been keeping up with TortoiseSVN updates, so I know that you need to specify 5, instead of 4-5.
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Eugene Yokota over 15 yearsIn this simplified example, it's easy to tell the "unwanted" part, but Subversion shouldn't have brought any changes from r4. In reality, it's hard to tell which part came from the unwanted revision that I did not specify. I frequently merge branch changes written by others.
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Stefan over 15 yearsWell, Subversion didn't actually merge r4. The problem you're seeing here is that Subversion encountered a conflict, and to indicate that conflict it not only marks the conflicting lines but also 1 line around the conflicting lines (i.e., context lines). If you had a line D, that line would also
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Eugene Yokota over 15 yearsLack of context is certainly is the key, thus "multiple consecutive changes".
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Stefan over 15 yearsbe included in the conflict. So actually, it still is easy to spot those 'unwanted' lines. Also, it you had more context lines (this example has almost no context lines, almost all lines are include din the merge), Subversion would be much more accurate with the merge.
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gcb almost 10 yearstechnically, you are just changing how you present your data. the text above is already a 3-way merge. just in a 1-D presentation. the regular merge is a 2-D presentation. you have to choose one of the files as the output, and add/remove changes while comparing to the other... 3-way merge is just a way to preserve the two file diff, while changing a third file. so, technically, you could solve your problem even with the 1-D diff on the text above (the one with <<<< and ==== )