Arborist - Subversion Tree Doctoring

I made Arborist because dealing with merging between subversion branches is a pain in the arse. The particular merge problem it is trying to solve is when you have multiple release branches of a project, like this:

• trunk - all changes from rel2 and rel1 need to get into here
• rel2 branch - all changes from rel1 need to get into here
• rel1 branch

It provides tools to keep track of what still needs to be merged in, and assists with the merging process.

In addition, it is designed to deal with projects that are broken down into separate modules, linked together with svn:externals references.

.mergesources.yml

The key to using arborst is to create a .mergesources.yml file. It should be of the following format:

rel1:
	.: /project/branches/rel1
	sapphire: /modules/sapphire/branches/rel1
	cms: /modules/cms/branches/rel1
	jsparty: /modules/jsparty/branches/rel1
	cmsworkflow: /modules/cmsworkflow/branches/rel1
rel2:
	.: /project/branches/rel2
	sapphire: /modules/sapphire/branches/rel2
	cms: /modules/cms/branches/rel2
	jsparty: /modules/jsparty/branches/rel2
	cmsworkflow: /modules/cmsworkflow/branches/rel2

In this example, we have indicated that there are two extra release branches of this project that need to be merged into the current version (presumably trunk): rel1 and rel2. For each of these releases, we have branched not only the root project folder, ., but 4 modules linked in as svn:externals: sapphire, cms, jsparty, and cmsworkflow.

Using arb

Once the .mergesource.yml file has been set up, we use it as follows:

Basic Usage

Calling this command will give a summary of everything that needs to be merged in:

> arb

Alternatively, you can see a summary of everything that should be merged in from one release/project:

> arb rel1

Once we see that, we can start an interactive session with a particular merge source. Choose a mergesource and start arborist using a command of this form:

> arb rel1/sapphire

Arborist will print recommended merge and commit commands on the script, asking whether or not you would like to execute each of them.

• To execute the command, press enter
• To skip the command, enter "n"
• To stop the script exectue, press Ctrl-C

Resuming an aborted merge session

> arb rel1/sapphire --startrev=1234

This will execute the same command as the previous item; however, it will start the merging from revision #1234. This is useful if you had to cancel your arborist session for some reason.

Cherry picking revisions

> arb rel1/sapphire --revs=100,101,106,107

This will limit the scope of your arborist execution to some specific revisions. This is useful if you want to use arborist to cherry pick, rather than do a full merge.