[Svnmerge] svnmerge and status --show-updates

[Giovanni Bajo]

Hello,

svnmerge.py currently runs a "svn status --show-updates" and makes sure there
are no pending updates on the repository before doing a merge. It inherited it
from what the old bash script used to do. I was wondering what people think
about this. My view:

- It slows down operation, as it requires an addition server connection.
- It can't help avoiding a final update before a commit: during the actual
merge, new commits may happen on the server, so by the time the merge is done,
a new update might be required.
- I don't see anything inherently wrong with merging before doing an update. I
can't see how it's different from doing any actual modifies before doing
update, which is legal and common (and people usually then update before
committing).

If, for some reason, updating before merging is better than merging before
updating, then why couldn't we just update the working copy before starting to
do the merge?

Given the above points, I'm in favor of removing the call to svn
status --show-updates.

Giovanni Bajo