svn rebasing and history lost

Question

We currently have 2 branches:

/repo/branch/current_version
/repo/branch/next_version

current_version is a branch where all developers currently works.

We starting a next version and created next_version branch from some point in current_version, while work on current_version is still continuing. In next_version we do some development and in next months the branch will become our main one, where all development will be done.

Since there's development on current_branch, we thought periodically (say once per 2 weeks) to rebase next_version. This in order to keep both branch in sync, so when all developers will eventually drop current_branch and move to next_release, next_release will contain all current_branch's feature integrated and tested.

The problem is rebasing. Actually rebasing is merging latest commits of current_branch to next_version. So if I'll examine history of commited files in next_release, all I'll see is the merge commits and not the history (commits/authors/annotation) of current_version.

Do I miss something?

Answer 1

No, you haven't missed anything. This is a big problem with using SVN for version control.

I ran into it over and over again at my last job. Every time somebody committed something to current_branch (to stick with your terminology), the commit message would have to be copied manually so it could be used in the merge commit message. This quickly became a huge pain.

That's why new version control software has come out with better merging capabilities (Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar come to mind).

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EDIT: Apparently SVN has fixed this issue. SVN 1.5 and up incorporate merge-sensitive logs and annotations. Use the flag --use-merge-history (-g) with svn merge and svn blame to see the commit messages from the merged branch.