Branching and Merging

What Branches Are For

Branches let several lines of work proceed in parallel: a feature branch for a big change while trunk stays releasable, or a release branch frozen for fixes while trunk moves forward.

Create a Branch

Copying in SVN is cheap and immediate:

svn copy svn://server/project/trunk svn://server/project/branches/feature-login -m "Branch for login feature"

Switch a Working Copy

svn switch svn://server/project/branches/feature-login

Switch points your existing working copy at another URL, keeping uncommitted local changes intact.

Merge Back to Trunk

svn switch svn://server/project/trunk
svn merge svn://server/project/branches/feature-login
svn commit -m "Merge feature-login into trunk"

Release Branches and Tags

svn copy svn://server/project/trunk svn://server/project/tags/1.0.0 -m "Tag 1.0.0"

Tags are frozen copies; no one commits to them directly.

Key Points

• Branches isolate work from the main line.
• Copy is instant, so branches are cheap.
• Switch changes which URL your working copy tracks.
• Tags record exact release snapshots.