Source Control Process - missing fixes

Question

I am using Subversion and Subclipse for my source control and follow the process of having a main trunk and taking branches for versions.

This works well and there are no major problems merging. However when there are significant changes to a file both in the trunk and the branch (unfortunately necessary) I have to manually edit the conflicts. The problem is that I am finding that I occasionally miss a bugfix or two.

How do others handle this situation? Aside from paying more attention or employing someone with better eyesight; are there any other possible solutions?

I add my JIRA references to any commits, however these then get lost in the merge.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Make ALL changes to trunk and then cherry pick which revisions go to which version branch ... This gives you a visual record of what revisions have gone where (merginfo).

Also assumes that all revisions will be eventually be included in a release from trunk.

Answer 2

Automated Unit testing & Continuous Integration ...

Answer 3

If the problem is that you can't remember which bugfixes have been merged across from one day to the other, I'd suggest doing a "record merge only" using tortoisesvn - this is for exactly the situation where you've had to do things manually and now want to make a record of the fact.