Mantain latest code between two branch merge

Question

I have a root from which two people have created two separate branches. Lets say b1 and b2. Both of them take the latest code form the root and start working on their respective branches. Now the person working on branch b1 completes his work and merges his branch to the root. After this the person working on branch b2 also completes and tries to merge his branch. But now the root has changed because b1 has been merged to it. So the person working on b2 does not have the latest root. There is a risk of data loss due to overwrite. Is there a way in which the person knows when was the root last updated. Also what can be done in this situation. Please help as I am new to SVN.

Answer 1

You may use :

svn log url_of_trunk

to see the log message of trunk, to know if there is new update and when.

If you want to merge all trunk's new codes to your branch, i.e., b2, run following command at root of b2's working copy:

svn merge url_of_trunk

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

1. If root contains not significatn changes, then b2 can be merged directly into root. Subversion will take care to merge differences. If Subversion can't merge it brings conflicts, but not silently overwrite files.

2. If user2 decide that root contains significant changes, then he should:

   • merge root into his branch (b2). Resolve conflicts, run test, may be fix found issues
   • merge b2 to root