Re: problems merging from branch to mainline

[Jonathan Kamens]

>I'm having some trouble merging from a branch to the mainline. The latest
>branch version is 1.1.2.9, while the latest mainline version is 1.2. I'm
>running this command from a checked-out copy of the mainline:
>
>cvs update -j1.1.2.9 foo.jsp
>
>What I expected to happen was file 'foo.jsp' would be updated from the
>changes in 1.1.2.9, which I would turn around and commit. Instead, I get the
>message:
>
>cvs server: file foo.jsp exists, but has been added in revision 1.1.2.9

What this is telling you is that the file was added independently on
both the branch on the mainline.  Since the file didn't exist when the
branch was created, there's no way for CVS to determine which changes
to the file were made on the branch and should thus be merged back to
the trunk.

You're going to have to merge the changes from the branch to the trunk
by hand, by diffing the two files and looking at which changes you
want to merge, or by using a diff/merge tool such as M-x ediff in
Emacs.