I’ve been away from code and SVN branch merges a little recently so I forgot the exact process of handling multiple branches merging up and down from trunk.

After a little thought and partially effective googling, i found that the following is an efficient process:

Introduction – What I had

• trunk
• branch_a created at SVN revision 2111
• branch_b created at SVN revision 2113

Step 1 – Preparation – Checkout local copies of trunk, branch_a, and branch_b

1. cd ~/
2. svn co http://svn_repository/trunk ./trunk
3. svn co http://svn_repository/branches/branch_a ./branch_a
4. svn co http://svn_repository/branches/branch_b ./branch_b
5. I ensured that all changes had been committed to trunk and both branches

Step 2 – Merging branch_a back to trunk after a successful rollout

1. cd ~/trunk
2. svn merge http://svn_repository/trunk http://svn_repository/branches/branch_a
3. svn commit -m “merged branch_a into trunk”

Step 3 – Merging the newly updated trunk into branch_b

1. cd ~/branch_b
2. svn merge http://svn_repository/trunk -r2113:HEAD .
3. svn commit -m “merged up from trunk, applying changes between 2113:HEAD that included changes made on branch_a”

Step 4 – When i’m ready, i’ll merge branch_b back into trunk, following Step 2 above

That’s it!