Hi Nathan,

On Saturday 25 July 2009 22:06:29 Nathan Davis wrote:
> FYI, if you haven't already, you may want to look into using SVK to handle
> your branches.  SVK is a distributed VCS that works well Subversion
> repositories (it uses Subversion's filesystem component).  Its main
> advantage is that you can merge two branches by just telling it what
> branches to merge ... it figures out the exact revisions to merge
> automatically.  I'm not certain, but I believe it can even handle cases
> where some changes have already been merged. 

I'm aware of SVK, but hadn't considered it in this case. I think however, that 
in this case it wouldn't be quite what I needed. Rather than containing one 
set of changes really, the branch I'm merging really contains about 5 or 6 
things which can be distinctly mergeable. The fact that it also contains code
from another branch already merged adds an extra layer on top complicating
things.

In practice what I'm needing to do is to take that composite branch and split 
it into discrete reviewable chunks, such that they can be cleanly merged. 
Part of the issue there is that there's changes to code outside Kamaelia/Apps 
which is very application specific, which is problematic.

Basically you can take this as meaning that the branch was proposed as being 
ready for merge when in fact it wasn't in it's current form. 

The way I'm essentially refactoring each discrete chunk before merge is to 
recognise that the code I'm merging IS good though in it's application 
domain, and shifting code into it's own Apps namespace relevant to the 
application.

That then allows it to be mergeable.

If the branch had been mergeable as is, despite the mixed branch issue, then 
SVK certainly would've been useful, but unfortunately it wasn't really quite 
that simple.

All that said, using SVK to create the detangled version may have been a good 
option, one that I'll bear in mind in future :-)

> It integrates really well with Subversion (you basically just point svk to
> you subversion repository and any svk updates also update Subversion).  I
> highly recommend it to anyone who needs to do a significant amount of
> merging with SVN. 
> Note that the smerge command is probably what you want for merging.

I'll take a look - anything that helps with merging is IMO a good thing.

> Also, I think the Repository page (http://www.kamaelia.org/Repository) has
> a mistake in it: svn co http://kamaelia.googlecode.com/svn kamaelia-trunk
> should be
> svn co http://kamaelia.googlecode.com/svn/trunk kamaelia-trunk

Good catch! I'll fix that.

> Let me know if you want some help getting started with SVK.  I'm not an
> expert, but should be able to point you in the right direction. 

Much appreciated - I may well take you up on that. :)

> Hope this is helpful,

It is indeed - thanks !

Regards,


Michael
-- 
http://yeoldeclue.com/blog
http://twitter.com/kamaelian
http://www.kamaelia.org/Home

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