In the previous section, we mentioned that both you and Sally made changes to integer.c on different branches. If you look at Sally's log message for revision 344, you can see that she fixed some spelling errors. No doubt, your copy of the same file still has the same spelling errors. It's likely that your future changes to this file will be affecting the same areas that have the spelling errors, so you're in for some potential conflicts when you merge your branch someday. It's better, then, to receive Sally's change now, before you start working too heavily in the same places.

It's time to use the svn merge command. This command, it turns out, is a very close cousin to the svn diff command (which you read about in Chapter 3). Both commands are able to compare any two objects in the repository and describe the differences. For example, you can ask svn diff to show you the exact change made by Sally in revision 344:

$ svn diff -r 343:344 https://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk

Index: integer.c
===================================================================
--- integer.c	(revision 343)
+++ integer.c	(revision 344)
@@ -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, "CPM"); break;
+    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;
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@
     low = (unsigned short) read_byte(gzfile);  /* read LSB */
     high = (unsigned short) read_byte(gzfile); /* read MSB */
     high = high << 8;  /* interpret MSB correctly */
-    total = low + high; /* add them togethe for correct total */
+    total = low + high; /* add them together for correct total */
 
     info->extra_header = (unsigned char *) my_malloc(total);
     fread(info->extra_header, total, 1, gzfile);
@@ -241,7 +241,7 @@
      Store the offset with ftell() ! */
 
   if ((info->data_offset = ftell(gzfile))== -1) {
-    printf("error: ftell() retturned -1.\n");
+    printf("error: ftell() returned -1.\n");
     exit(1);
   }
 
@@ -249,7 +249,7 @@
   printf("I believe start of compressed data is %u\n", info->data_offset);
   #endif
   
-  /* Set postion eight bytes from the end of the file. */
+  /* Set position eight bytes from the end of the file. */
 
   if (fseek(gzfile, -8, SEEK_END)) {
     printf("error: fseek() returned non-zero\n");

The svn merge command is almost exactly the same. Instead of printing the differences to your terminal, however, it applies them directly to your working copy as local modifications :

$ svn merge -r 343:344 https://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk
U  integer.c

$ svn status
M  integer.c

The output of svn merge shows that your copy of integer.c was patched. It now contains Sally's change—the change has been “copied” from the trunk to your working copy of your private branch, and now exists as a local modification. At this point, it's up to you to review the local modification and make sure it works correctly.

In another scenario, it's possible that things may not have gone so well, and that integer.c may have entered a conflicted state. You might need to resolve the conflict using standard procedures (see Chapter 3), or if you decide that the merge was a bad idea altogether, simply give up and svn revert the local change.

But assuming that you've reviewed the merged change, you can svn commit the change as usual. At that point, the change has been merged into your repository branch. In version control terminology, this act of copying changes between branches is commonly called porting changes.

When you commit the local modification, make sure your log message mentions that you're porting a specific change from one branch to another. For example:

$ svn commit -m "integer.c: ported r344 (spelling fixes) from trunk."
Sending        integer.c
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 360.

As you'll see in the next sections, this is a very important “best practice” to follow.

$ svn diff -r 343:344 https://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk > patchfile
$ patch -p0  < patchfile
Patching file integer.c using Plan A...
Hunk #1 succeeded at 147.
Hunk #2 succeeded at 164.
Hunk #3 succeeded at 241.
Hunk #4 succeeded at 249.
done

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 Chapter 9 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 tree-changes. 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 above 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.

If you want changes applied somewhere else, you'll need to say so. For example, if you're sitting in the parent directory of your working copy, you'll have to specify the target directory to receive the changes:

$ svn merge -r 343:344 https://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk my-calc-branch
U   my-calc-branch/integer.c