SVN : Preparing for branching/ Merging process
Preparing your repository for branching and merging can turn into a headache when you do it for the first time. This is a small .. may be obvious .. note to everybody who can get some help
My setup
- SVN Server hosted on linux
- Tortoise SVN as client being used from windows
If you perform following checks before getting into the process of branching and merging, you are going to save a lot of time and efforts trying to figure out errors messages and causes
- Make sure your SVN Server version is above 1.5. If not, UPGRADE. In my case it was 1.4.2 and I upgraded it to 1.6.* from Collabnet
- Make sure your SVN Repository version is upgraded. You can find that out by using following commands
cd /path/to/repo/reponame cd db cat format
i.e. changing to repo/directory/db and looking at contents of format file. For 1.4.*, format file showed 2, which should be 4 for it to be a 1.6.* repository. I had to upgrade the repository version by using
svnadmin upgrade path/to/repo/reponame
- Make sure your SVN Client is equipped to handle features offered by the upgraded SVN Server. I just downloaded version of tortoise svn made for 1.6 version
After these checks, you can choose the model you want to opt for your process and get started.
In my case, I chose mainline development happening in trunk, creating branches after each phase release. Every-time a bug is fixed in a branch, its committed to its corresponding branch. Then from trunk, using TortoiseSVN’s “reintegrate a branch” option, I choose repository URL of branch and follow through steps to finish the merge. It works wonders !
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