Robust Automated Merging

Robust Automated Merging

Merging has historically always been the bane of developers, so much so that it is common practice to put off merging as long as possible, creating "big bang" merges that take a long time to complete, interrupt the development process for the rest of the team, and are often fraught with error. This is because in other SCM systems merging is not a primary focus. It is either not addressed at all and you must perform the merge manually, or the merging features in those systems are cumbersome or inadequate. Often, even if their SCM system has a merge feature developers resort to using third party tools outside the SCM to perform the merge. Some SCM systems use integrations to third party merge tools for their merge processing. In either case the merge process becomes loosely coupled with the SCM system which makes their merge process awkward and difficult to use.

In Source Reliance merging is at the core of the feature set. It has to be since merging is the act of managing content contribution in a team environment. There are a number of things an SCM's merging facility must provide:

The merge feature must be straight forward and easy to use
Must be able to easily determine the scope of a merge prior to performing a merge
All housekeeping processes such as branch state management, branch labeling, etc. must be fully automated
The state of the merge must be automatically maintained and merges must be able to be paused and resumed
Multiple merges on different branches must be able to be active simultaneously
All branch changes, both project hierarchical and file changes, must be automatically tracked and automatically merged
All possible merge conditions must be handled, including based and unbased content, and complex project hierarchical level changes created by multiple merge points and component movement, readding, and renaming
Must provide complete, robust conflict resolution at both the project hierarchy and file levels
The merge process must be verifiable at all stages of the merge and the source of all merge content must be easily traceable
Testing the merged content prior to committing it to the database must be incorporated in the merge process
Must be able to undo a merge atomically

The merge feature in Source Reliance is built into the product and reduces to minutes what takes hours or days in other systems. In Source Reliance the merge process is so easy that we recommend merging as frequently as is feasible. It is easy to use and handles all the details for you so you can focus on the task of managing your code.