Re: How to merge head into a branch?

[Kaz Kylheku]

Roland Roberts <address@hidden> wrote in message news:<address@hidden>...
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> A couple of weeks ago, I created a branch on a directory in order to
> make some changes to get our project to build with automake/autoconf.
> Meanwhile, other members of the team continue to do work on the head.
> I would like to merge those changes into my branch (at least I think I
> would like to, maybe someone will tell me why that is a bad idea) so

What you really want is to integrate with their latest work, which is
a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do. CVS doesn't support
``merge in any direction'' very well. Perhaps the most effective way
to synchronize with the trunk is to create a new branch from the
trunk. Switch to that newly created branch, and merge your changes to
the working copy from your original branch. When you commit the
results of this merge, it won't got to the trunk but it will instead
be shunted to the new branch! Voila: the trunk developers are not
disturbed, and your work is all synchronized. Moreover, you have not
merged anything in the ``wrong'' direction.

You can keep doing this as long as you want. When your work becomes
stable, you can merge it right to the trunk tip rather than shunting
it to a new branch.

The only drawback is that you don't have your branch all in one piece.
But if you want that kind of undisturbed changeset, then do the entire
work from start to finish without integrating.