Svnmerge.py
svnmerge.py is a tool for automatic branch management. It allows branch maintainers to merge changes from and to their branch very easily, and automatically records which changes were already merged; this allows to display an always updated list of changes yet to be merged, and totally prevehents merge mistakes (such as merging the same change twice). See our feature list for a more detailed description.
Features
- Merge tracking support: the tool remembers which revisions have been already merged, and always do the right thing by default (only merges new revisions).
- Specific support for development branches with a very simple "merge everything" command (does everything automatically).
- Specific support for release branches through cherry-picking: name and merge single revisions or revision ranges.
- List revisions available for merging (revision numbers, logs, or diffs).
- Bidirectional merges: merges changes forth and back between a branch and its head.
- Multiple heads support: merge changes from multiple sources. This is useful, for instance, for the trunk, which usually needs to merge changes from multiple branches.
- Revision blocking: mark some revisions as unwanted in the branch, so that they will never get merged and you can forget about them.
- Merge rollbacks: freely revert merges in case you changed your mind.
- Absolutely commit-free: the user will always have to do the commit himself, and thus will always have a chance to review svnmerge.py's modifications.
- Commit message suggestions: an informative commit message listing all the logs of the merged revisions is generated in a text file, as a suggestion for a good commit message.
- Manual merges support: if you merged some changes manually, you can inform svnmerge.py to update its merge tracking info.
System requirements
System requirements are down to a bare minimum, to lower as much as possible the bar for using the tool. Currently, you need:
- SVN command line client, version 1.1 or later.
It might actually work with an older version but it has never been tested. Notice that the command line client is required: so, noticeably, if you use TortoiseSVN, you need to go install the official SVN distribution to use svnmerge.py (and no, this causes no conflicts whatsoever!) - Python 2.0 or later.
This is used to run svnmerge.py directly from its source; another option is to download the binary Windows distribution (svnmerge.exe) which does not require an existing Python installation.
Downloads
| Link | Description |
|---|---|
| svnmerge.py trunk version | This is the default development version, which is usually very stable. Get it without worrying too much! |
| svnmerge.py 1.4-branch version | This is the version shipped with SVN 1.4. It's less updated than the trunk version so it will usually have less features but maybe be a little more stable. Get this if the current trunk version is temporarily broken. |
| svnmerge.exe Windows executable | Self-contained Windows executable, does not require a Python installation (but still requires SVN command line client). This is updated every once in a while, use --version to compare it with the trunk version. |
svnmerge.py is maintained within the Subversion repository. There is not a proper release plan or development map, so there are no official releases. svnmerge.py gets shipped with Subversion mostly 'the way it is' when Subversion itself is shipped. Thus, the trunk version is recommended: we believe it to be mostly stable (there is a quite extensive testsuite).