svn checkin from tag to trunk

Question

We intend to maintain our SVN database as a single trunk, with no branches on a day-to-day basis.

We will, however, tag stable 'releases' from time to time. These tags are really intended to be tags, meaning no one checks anything in to tags.

Now, when there is a bug, a user checks out a given "Golden" tag (a working database) makes edits to their files and these changes need to go back into trunk.

I have tried in vain to figure out a way to do this.

svn switch won't work since it updates the local working copy (which I do not want). svn merge isn't working either since it appears to check in changes to the tag before merging them to the trunk, as well I'd need to have 2 versions checked out: trunk and tag.

The only way I see this working is to actually have 2 checked out databases and physically copy over files from tag to trunk. This is clumsy, error-prone and cumbersome.

Technically I do not need a merge at all. In fact, I would prefer to check-in my modified files directly rather than merge, since the file-owners are individuals, not a group (in other words, I know what I am doing: For me compile can break with a merge - not C or software code!). What I need is an easy way to switch my SVN url from tag to trunk non-destructively - i.e - without updates to any file.

Failing that, I would prefer a way to check in a file from a tag-checked-out-database directly into trunk.

Any ideas anyone?

Answer 1

Please, with all due respect: I understand what SVN does with merges and I do not want to handle that. We've tried merge but it hasn't worked out (has worked, but not worked out) for us. As I mentioned, we're not dealing with standard software code, which is part of the problem. In any case, I will hazard a guess that switching tag to trunk without an automatic update is not a feature afforded by SVN (which was my original question)

In any case, I figured out how to make the switch for individual files. That part works now as I intend it to, so I can check out a tag, and check specific files in to trunk successfully.

% cd $tag

% svn switch $repo/trunk/filepath/file ./filepath/file