Just as the term “changeset” is often used in version control systems, so is the term of cherrypicking. This word refers to the act of choosing one specific changeset from a branch and replicating it to another. Cherrypicking may also refer to the act of duplicating a particular set of (not necessarily contiguous!) changesets from one branch to another. This is in contrast to more typical merging scenarios, where the “next” contiguous range of revisions is duplicated automatically.

Why would people want to replicate just a single change? It comes up more often than you'd think. For example, let's go back in time and imagine that you haven't yet merged your private feature-branch back to the trunk. At the water cooler, you get word that Sally made an interesting change to integer.c on the trunk. Looking over the history of commits to the trunk, you see that in revision 355 she fixed a critical bug that directly impacts the feature you're working on. You might not be ready to merge all the trunk changes to your branch just yet, but you certainly need that particular bugfix in order to continue your work.

$ svn diff -c 355 http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk

Index: integer.c
===================================================================
--- integer.c	(revision 354)
+++ integer.c	(revision 355)
@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@
     case 6:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "HPFS (OS/2 or NT)"); break;
     case 7:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "Macintosh"); break;
     case 8:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "Z-System"); break;
-    case 9:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "CP/MM");
+    case 9:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "CP/M"); break;
     case 10:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "TOPS-20"); break;
     case 11:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "NTFS (Windows NT)"); break;
     case 12:  sprintf(info->operating_system, "QDOS"); break;

Just as you used svn diff in the prior example to examine revision 355, you can pass the same option to svn merge:

$ svn merge -c 355 http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk
U    integer.c

$ svn status
M      integer.c

You can now go through the usual testing procedures before committing this change to your branch. After the commit, Subversion marks r355 as having been merged to the branch, so that future “magic” merges that synchronize your branch with the trunk know to skip over r355. (Merging the same change to the same branch almost always results in a conflict!)

$ cd my-calc-branch

$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo .
/trunk:341-349,355

# Notice that r355 isn't listed as "eligible" to merge, because
# it's already been merged.
$ svn mergeinfo http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk --show-revs eligible
r350
r351
r352
r353
r354
r356
r357
r358
r359
r360

$ svn merge http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk
--- Merging r350 through r354 into '.':
 U   .
U    integer.c
U    Makefile
--- Merging r356 through r360 into '.':
 U   .
U    integer.c
U    button.c

This use-case of replicating (or backporting) bugfixes from one branch to another is perhaps the most popular reason for cherrypicking changes; it comes up all the time, for example, when a team is maintaining a “release branch” of software. (We discuss this pattern in “发布分支”一节.)

A word of warning: while svn diff and svn merge are very similar in concept, they do have different syntax in many cases. Be sure to read about them in 第 9 章 Subversion 完全参考 for details, or ask svn help. For example, svn merge requires a working-copy path as a target, i.e., a place where it should apply the generated patch. If the target isn't specified, it assumes you are trying to perform one of the following common operations:

If you are merging a directory and haven't specified a target path, svn merge assumes the first case and tries to apply the changes into your current directory. If you are merging a file, and that file (or a file by the same name) exists in your current working directory, svn merge assumes the second case and tries to apply the changes to a local file with the same name.

You've now seen some examples of the svn merge command, and you're about to see several more. If you're feeling confused about exactly how merging works, you're not alone. Many users (especially those new to version control) are initially perplexed about the proper syntax of the command and about how and when the feature should be used. But fear not, this command is actually much simpler than you think! There's a very easy technique for understanding exactly how svn merge behaves.

迷惑的主要原因是这个命令的名称，术语“合并”不知什么原因被用来表明分支的组合，或者是其他什么神奇的数据混合，这不是事实，一个更好的名称应该是svn diff-and-apply，这是发生的所有事件：首先两个版本库树比较，然后将区别应用到本地拷贝。

If you're using svn merge to do basic copying of changes between branches, it will generally do the right thing automatically. For example, a command like the following:

$ svn merge http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/some-branch

will attempt to duplicate any changes made on some-branch into your current working directory, which is presumably a working copy that shares some historical connection to the branch. The command is smart enough to only duplicate changes that your working copy doesn't yet have. If you repeat this command once a week, it will only duplicate the “newest” branch changes that happened since you last merged.

If you choose to use the svn merge command in all its full glory by giving it specific revision ranges to duplicate, then the command takes three main arguments:

Once these three arguments are specified, the two trees are compared, and the resulting differences are applied to the target working copy as local modifications. When the command is done, the results are no different than if you had hand-edited the files or run various svn add or svn delete commands yourself. If you like the results, you can commit them. If you don't like the results, you can simply svn revert all of the changes.

svn merge的语法允许非常灵活的指定三个必要的参数，如下是一些例子：

$ svn merge http://svn.example.com/repos/branch1@150 \
            http://svn.example.com/repos/branch2@212 \
            my-working-copy

$ svn merge -r 100:200 http://svn.example.com/repos/trunk my-working-copy

$ svn merge -r 100:200 http://svn.example.com/repos/trunk

第一种语法使用URL@REV的形式直接列出了所有参数，第二种语法可以用来作为比较同一个URL的不同版本的简略写法，最后一种语法表示工作拷贝是可选的，如果省略，默认是当前目录。

While the first example shows the “full” syntax of svn merge, it needs to be used very carefully; it can result in merges which do not record any svn:mergeinfo metadata at all. The next section talks a bit more about this.

Subversion tries to generate merge metadata whenever it can, to make future invocations of svn merge smarter. There are still situations, however, where svn:mergeinfo data is not created or changed. Remember to be a bit wary of these scenarios:

就像svn update命令，svn merge会把修改应用到工作拷贝，因此它也会造成冲突，因为svn merge造成的冲突有时候会有些不同，本小节会解释这些区别。

作为开始，我们假定本地没有修改，当你svn update到一个特定修订版本时，修改会“干净的”应用到工作拷贝，服务器产生比较两树的增量数据：一个工作拷贝和你关注的版本树的虚拟快照，因为比较的左边同你拥有的完全相同，增量数据确保你把工作拷贝转化到右边的树。

But svn merge has no such guarantees and can be much more chaotic: the advanced user can ask the server to compare any two trees at all, even ones that are unrelated to the working copy! This means there's large potential for human error. Users will sometimes compare the wrong two trees, creating a delta that doesn't apply cleanly. svn merge will do its best to apply as much of the delta as possible, but some parts may be impossible. Just as the Unix patch command sometimes complains about “failed hunks,” svn merge will similarly complain about “skipped targets”:

$ svn merge -r 1288:1351 http://svn.example.com/repos/branch
U    foo.c
U    bar.c
Skipped missing target: 'baz.c'
U    glub.c
U    sputter.h

Conflict discovered in 'glorb.h'.
Select: (p) postpone, (df) diff-full, (e) edit,
        (h) help for more options:

In the previous example it might be the case that baz.c exists in both snapshots of the branch being compared, and the resulting delta wants to change the file's contents, but the file doesn't exist in the working copy. Whatever the case, the “skipped” message means that the user is most likely comparing the wrong two trees; they're the classic sign of user error. When this happens, it's easy to recursively revert all the changes created by the merge (svn revert --recursive), delete any unversioned files or directories left behind after the revert, and rerun svn merge with different arguments.

也应当注意前一个例子显示glorb.h发生了冲突，我们已经规定本地拷贝没有修改：冲突怎么会发生呢？因为用户可以使用svn merge将过去的任何变化应用到当前工作拷贝，变化包含的文本修改也许并不能干净的应用到工作拷贝文件，即使这些文件没有本地修改。

另一个svn update和svn merge的小区别是冲突产生的文件的名字不同，在“解决冲突(合并别人的修改)”一节，我们看到过更新产生的文件名字为filename.mine、filename.rOLDREV和filename.rNEWREV，当svn merge产生冲突时，它产生的三个文件分别为 filename.working、filename.left和filename.right。在这种情况下，术语“left”和“right”表示了两棵树比较时的两边，在两种情况下，不同的名字会帮助你区分冲突是因为更新造成的还是合并造成的。

Sometimes there's a particular changeset that you don't want to be automatically merged. For example, perhaps your team's policy is to do new development work on /trunk, but to be more conservative about backporting changes to a stable branch you use for releasing to the public. On one extreme, you can manually cherrypick single changesets from trunk to the branch—just the changes that are stable enough to pass muster. Maybe things aren't quite that strict, though; perhaps most of the time you'd like to just let svn merge automatically merge most changes from trunk to branch. In this case, you'd like a way to mask a few specific changes out, i.e. prevent them from ever being automatically merged.

In Subversion 1.5, the only way to block a changeset is to make the system believe that the change has already been merged. To do this, one can invoke a merge command with the --record-only option:

$ cd my-calc-branch

$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo .
/trunk:1680-3305

# Let's make the metadata list r3328 as already merged.
$ svn merge -c 3328 --record-only http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk

$ svn status
M     .

$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo .
/trunk:1680-3305,3328

$ svn commit -m "Block r3328 from being merged to the branch."
…

This technique works, but it's also a little bit dangerous. The main problem is that we're not clearly differentiating between the ideas of “I don't want this change” and “I don't have this change.” We're effectively lying to the system, making it think that the change was previously merged. This puts the responsibility on you—the user—to remember that the change wasn't actually merged, it just wasn't wanted. There's no way to ask Subversion for a list of “blocked changelists.” If you want to track them (so that you can unblock them someday.) you'll need to record them in a text file somewhere, or perhaps in an invented property. In Subversion 1.5, unfortunately, this is the only way to manage blocked revisions; the plans are to make a better interface for this in future versions.

One of the main features of any version control system is to keep track of who changed what, and when they did it. The svn log and svn blame commands are just the tools for this: when invoked on individual files, they show not only the history of changesets that affected the file, but exactly which user wrote which line of code, and when they did it.

When changes start getting replicated between branches, however, things start to get complicated. For example, if you were to ask svn log about the history of your feature branch, it shows exactly every revision that ever affected the branch:

$ cd my-calc-branch
$ svn log -q
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r390 | user | 2002-11-22 11:01:57 -0600 (Fri, 22 Nov 2002) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r388 | user | 2002-11-21 05:20:00 -0600 (Thu, 21 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r381 | user | 2002-11-20 15:07:06 -0600 (Wed, 20 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r359 | user | 2002-11-19 19:19:20 -0600 (Tue, 19 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r357 | user | 2002-11-15 14:29:52 -0600 (Fri, 15 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r343 | user | 2002-11-07 13:50:10 -0600 (Thu, 07 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r341 | user | 2002-11-03 07:17:16 -0600 (Sun, 03 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r303 | sally | 2002-10-29 21:14:35 -0600 (Tue, 29 Oct 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r98 | sally | 2002-02-22 15:35:29 -0600 (Fri, 22 Feb 2002) | 2 lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------

But is this really an accurate picture of all the changes that happened on the branch? What's being left out here is the fact that revisions 390, 381, and 357 were actually the results of merging changes from trunk. If you look at a one of these logs in detail, the multiple trunk changesets that comprised the branch change are nowhere to be seen.

$ svn log -v -r 390
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r390 | user | 2002-11-22 11:01:57 -0600 (Fri, 22 Nov 2002) | 1 line
Changed paths:
   M /branches/my-calc-branch/button.c
   M /branches/my-calc-branch/README

Final merge of trunk changes to my-calc-branch.

We happen to know that this merge to the branch was nothing but a merge of trunk changes. How can we see those trunk changes as well? The answer is to use the --use-merge-history (-g) option. This option expands those “child” changes that were part of the merge.

$ svn log -v -r 390 -g
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r390 | user | 2002-11-22 11:01:57 -0600 (Fri, 22 Nov 2002) | 1 line
Changed paths:
   M /branches/my-calc-branch/button.c
   M /branches/my-calc-branch/README

Final merge of trunk changes to my-calc-branch.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r383 | sally | 2002-11-21 03:19:00 -0600 (Thu, 21 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
Changed paths:
   M /branches/my-calc-branch/button.c
Merged via: r390

Fix inverse graphic error on button.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r382 | sally | 2002-11-20 16:57:06 -0600 (Wed, 20 Nov 2002) | 2 lines
Changed paths:
   M /branches/my-calc-branch/README
Merged via: r390

Document my last fix in README.

By making the log operation use merge history, we see not just the revision we queried (r390), but the two revisions that came along on the ride with it—a couple of changes made by Sally to the trunk. This is a much more complete picture of history!

The svn blame command also takes the --use-merge-history (-g) option. If this option is neglected, then somebody looking at a line-by-line annotation of button.c may get the mistaken impression that you were responsible for the lines that fixed a certain error:

$ svn blame button.c
…
   390    user    retval = inverse_func(button, path);
   390    user    return retval;
   390    user    }
…

And while it's true that you did actually commit those three lines in revision 390, two of them were actually written by Sally back in revision 383:

$ svn blame button.c -g
…
G    383    sally   retval = inverse_func(button, path);
G    383    sally   return retval;
     390    user    }
…

Now we know who to really blame for those two lines of code!

当与Subversion开发者交谈时你一定会听到提及术语祖先，这个词是用来描述两个对象的关系：如果他们互相关联，一个对象就是另一个的祖先，或者相反。

For example, suppose you commit revision 100, which includes a change to a file foo.c. Then foo.c@99 is an “ancestor” of foo.c@100. On the other hand, suppose you commit the deletion of foo.c in revision 101, and then add a new file by the same name in revision 102. In this case, foo.c@99 and foo.c@102 may appear to be related (they have the same path), but in fact are completely different objects in the repository. They share no history or “ancestry.”

The reason for bringing this up is to point out an important difference between svn diff and svn merge. The former command ignores ancestry, while the latter command is quite sensitive to it. For example, if you asked svn diff to compare revisions 99 and 102 of foo.c, you would see line-based diffs; the diff command is blindly comparing two paths. But if you asked svn merge to compare the same two objects, it would notice that they're unrelated and first attempt to delete the old file, then add the new file; the output would indicate a deletion followed by an add:

D    foo.c
A    foo.c
      

Most merges involve comparing trees that are ancestrally related to one another; therefore, svn merge defaults to this behavior. Occasionally, however, you may want the merge command to compare two unrelated trees. For example, you may have imported two source-code trees representing different vendor releases of a software project (see “Vendor Branches”一节). If you ask svn merge to compare the two trees, you'd see the entire first tree being deleted, followed by an add of the entire second tree! In these situations, you'll want svn merge to do a path-based comparison only, ignoring any relations between files and directories. Add the --ignore-ancestry option to your merge command, and it will behave just like svn diff. (And conversely, the --notice-ancestry option will cause svn diff to behave like the svn merge command.)

一个普遍的愿望是重构源程序，特别是Java软件项目。在改名中文件和目录变乱，通常导致每个项目成员的极大破坏。听起来好像应该使用分支，不是吗？只是创建分支，变乱事情，然后合并回主干，不对吗？

Alas, this scenario doesn't work so well right now and is considered one of Subversion's current weak spots. The problem is that Subversion's update command isn't as robust as it should be, particularly when dealing with copy and move operations.

When you use svn copy to duplicate a file, the repository remembers where the new file came from, but it fails to transmit that information to the client which is running svn update or svn merge. Instead of telling the client, “Copy that file you already have to this new location,” it instead sends down an entirely new file. This can lead to problems, especially because the same thing happens with renamed files. A lesser-known fact about Subversion is that it lacks “true renames”—the svn move command is nothing more than an aggregation of svn copy and svn delete.

例如，假定我们在一个私有分支工作，你将integer.c改名为whole.c，你这是在分支上创建了原来文件的一个拷贝，并且删除了原来的文件。同时，回到trunk，Sally提交了一些integer.c的修改，所以你需要将分支合并到主干：

$ cd calc/trunk

$ svn merge --reintegrate http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/branches/my-calc-branch
--- Merging differences between repository URLs into '.':
D   integer.c
A   whole.c
U   .
      

This doesn't look so bad at first glance, but it's also probably not what you or Sally expected. The merge operation has deleted the latest version of the integer.c file (the one containing Sally's latest changes), and blindly added your new whole.c file—which is a duplicate of the older version of integer.c. The net effect is that merging your “rename” to the branch has removed Sally's recent changes from the latest revision!

This isn't true data loss; Sally's changes are still in the repository's history, but it may not be immediately obvious that this has happened. The moral of this story is that until Subversion improves, be very careful about merging copies and renames from one branch to another.

If you've just upgraded your server to Subversion 1.5 or later, then there's a significant risk that pre-1.5 Subversion clients can mess up your automated merge tracking. Why is this? When a pre-1.5 Subversion client performs svn merge, it doesn't modify the value of the svn:mergeinfo property at all. So the subsequent commit, despite being the result of a merge, doesn't tell the repository about the duplicated changes—that information is lost. Later on, when “merge-aware” clients attempt automatic merging, they're likely to run into all sorts of conflicts resulting from repeated merges.

If you and your team are relying on the merge-tracking features of Subversion, then you may want to configure your repository to prevent older clients from committing changes. The easy way to do this is by inspecting the “capabilities” parameter in the start-commit hook script. If the client reports itself as having mergeinfo capabilities, the hook script can allow the commit to start. If the client doesn't report that capability, have the hook deny the commit. We'll learn more about hook scripts in the next chapter; see “实现版本库钩子”一节 and start-commit for details.