[Svnmerge] truMerge, a tree-conflict aware merge helper tool

[Schellingerhout, Nico]

Dear Subversion user/developer,

We are proud to present truMerge, a Subversion merge helper tool
that combines true rename functionality [1] with Subversion merge, in
order to handle tree conflicts more reliably and effectively.

Do not be fooled by the name: truMerge is by no means "the truth" in
merging (we believe that in due course, Subversion will blow truMerge
out of the water). However, we find it useful and to be a significant
improvement over Subversion's current merge for archives that undergo
a lot of tree restructuring.

truMerge can be seen as a prelude of things to come: as you are
probably aware, a team of Subversion developers has been working on
the detection and raising of tree conflicts (initially in the
tree-conflicts branch, now being completed on trunk). truMerge takes
this a step further: the automatic resolution of tree conflicts.
(Please note that truMerge does not yet make use of the tree conflict
raising concept being developed; it is the intention to use that
mechanism as soon as it is available for general use.)

truMerge has been in use at Philips Healthcare for several months
now. truMerge has helped us merge more reliably and efficiently: some
of our major archives undergo major refactoring regularly, and plain
Subversion merge was unable to deal with this situation, a.k.a. tree
conflicts [2]. truMerge not only recognizes but also handles most
tree conflicts automatically.

truMerge is made available [3] under an Open Source license [4], and
we invite anyone interested in Subversion, true renames, merging or
tree conflict handling to take a look. You are welcome to use it, and
even more welcome to help us improve it by:

* Test. Download truMerge, try it out and test the tool. If you
  find problems, please report them on the users discussion list or
  on the project tracker of [3].

* Discuss. Share your experiences with other users. The users
  discussion list on [3] is available to you.

* Contribute. Fix problems that you or others find. The project
  tracker on [3] contains a list of open issues.

* Promote. Tell others about this tool.

Note: because the truMerge development is Windows XP based, truMerge
so far only runs on Windows. Porting to other environments should not
be difficult though, since truMerge is implemented in Perl.

Best regards,

Nico
---
N.W. Schellingerhout
Philips Healthcare

[1] http://subversion.tigris.org/merge-tracking/requirements.html
[2] http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2282
[3] http://truMerge.open.collab.net/
[4] http://trumerge.open.collab.net/source/browse/trumerge/trunk/software/COPYING?revision=2&view=markup


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