On merging and tracking changes: In Subversion, a global revision number N names a tree in the repository: it's the way the repository looked after the Nth commit. It's also the name of an implicit changeset: if you compare tree N with tree N-1, you can derive the exact patch that was committed. For this reason, it's easy to think of revision N as not just a tree, but a changeset as well. If you use an issue tracker to manage bugs, you can use the revision numbers to refer to particular patches that fix bugsfor example, this issue was fixed by revision 9238.. Somebody can then run svn log -r9238 to read about the exact changeset which fixed the bug, and run svn diff -r9237:9238 to see the patch itself. And Subversion's merge command also uses revision numbers. You can merge specific changesets from one branch to another by naming them in the merge arguments: svn merge -r9237:9238 would merge changeset #9238 into your working copy. On christening names: A nice way of finding the revision in which a branch was created (the "base" of the branch) is to use the --stop-on-copy option to svn log. The log subcommand will normally show every change ever made to the branch, including tracing back through the copy which created the branch. So normally, you'll see history from the trunk as well. The --stop-on-copy will halt log output as soon as svn log detects that its target was copied or renamed. On ancestral merges: Ideally, your version control system should prevent the double-application of changes to a branch. It should automatically remember which changes a branch has already received, and be able to list them for you. It should use this information to help automate merges as much as possible. Unfortunately, Subversion is not such a system. Like CVS, Subversion 1.0 does not yet record any information about merge operations. When you commit local modifications, the repository has no idea whether those changes came from running svn merge, or from just hand-editing the files. What does this mean to you, the user? It means that until the day Subversion grows this feature, you'll have to track merge information yourself....
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