Remove unnecessary svn:mergeinfo properties

Question

Here is another way to delete all sub tree svn:mergeinfo properties but not at the root folder (this is needed for branching to work properly).

From the root of the project do:

svn propdel svn:mergeinfo -R
svn revert .
svn ci -m "Removed mergeinfo"

Here is a way to delete all subtree svn:mergeinfo properties. Run it inside the root of your repository:

svn propget svn:mergeinfo --depth=infinity 
    | grep -v "^/"
    | grep -v "^\."   
    | cut -d- -f1 
    | xargs svn propdel svn:mergeinfo

All in one line for easy copy/pasting:

svn propget svn:mergeinfo --depth=infinity | grep -v "^/" | grep -v "^\." | cut -d- -f1 | xargs svn propdel svn:mergeinfo

To preview which files this will effect before you run it, change the last "propdel" to "propget" or remove the last xargs pipe altogether.

As mentioned in this thread:

• Most empty mergeinfo ("blank") can be caused by working copy to working copy copies/moves where the source item has no explicit mergeinfo. Using propdel can be the solution unless you are using a 1.6 SVN: since 1.5.5 these WC-to-WC copies no longer create empty mergeinfo on the destination
• an earlier svn move (rename) restructuring operation can also propagate mergeinfo, instead of leaving them at the root directory
• there is a potential memory issue, tracked by case 3393 which will be fixed in an upcoming 1.6.2 version and back-ported in 1.5

As I am not confident with blind svn:merge-info property deletion, I have implemented a tool to analyze the current situation on a working copy and remove as much merge revisions as possible from non-root merge-info properties. After additional human checks and controls, the changes on the working copy can be committed.

Here it is: svn-clean-mergeinfo

Do not hesitate to report any issue about its usage to get it improved.

Subversion 1.10 introduces a new tool dedicated to that task: svn-mergeinfo-normalizer

I know it's been a while, but I ran into a similar problem. I'm using TortoiseSVN 1.6.7. It just so happened that the property was on the root of my working copy. When I viewed the properties on the root and clicked Remove on svn:mergeinfo, it asked me if I want to remove it recursively. This got rid of all of my svn:mergeinfo cockups.

If you're sure you want to mass-remove mergeinfo properties, you can use the following BASH script.

FILES=`svn status |grep "^ M      " |sed s/" M      "// |tr '\n', ' '`
svn revert $FILES

It gets a list of changed files, filters it to just mergeinfo only changes, strips everything but the actual file path, converts the one-per-line paths into a space delimited list, and the calls revert on that list.