Choosing changes to merge

[sherware]

When we go to merge in changes from one branch to another why does the list of changes to merge always show changes that have already been merged? Is there a way for it to drop off changes that have been merged through this process? We're pretty good about merging changes back so there shouldn't be a big list of changes to merge to the main branch so sometimes it's unnerving to see a list of about 50 changes listed when you're merging because you start to second guess yourself as to whether you have merged them before.

-Phil Sherwood

[lbauer]

Vault doesn't keep track of changesets that have been merged. We know this would be useful for users, but is difficult to implement.

One thing you can do is manually record which changes you have already merged. I know that's pretty low-tech.

You could also get info from Vault history about what has been merged, if you have been keeping the default comments that the Merge Branches Wizard adds on check-in. The default comment is: "Merge Branches: Origin=<$/<OriginFolder> Version: <n> Version: <n> etc.

In the folder tree, right-click on the folder that would be your target folder. Select Show History, and in the History Query Filter/Sort dialog, click on Comments tab and select the radio button for "include by search string." You want to search comments for the word "merge."

Then click the Dates & Labels tab, and select a date sometime prior to when you last merged. This will keep the query results shorter.

Click OK to run the query. In the query results you will see the comments on the right-hand side. Double click on one of these, and it will bring up the version details. This will tell you the date of the merge, what items were in the merge and what versions of the Origin folder were merged into the Target.

Also in the History Explorer query results, if you select the menu item Query ->Save All Results As... you can save the results as a .csv or.txt file, so you get a copy of the comments.

It's true that as there are more revisions to folders, the Merge Branches Wizard will show more and more transactions available. And you're right, you don't want to either merge something that's already been merged, or miss a change set.

Keeping track manually and/or using History will let you know what's already been merged.

[sherware]

Is there a way to add the File Name column to the list of changes to merge? It would be very helpful especially if you have comments that are pretty much the same for different files.

[lbauer]

You can see what files are in the folder version(s) being merged. In the Select Changes to be Merged screen which shows the revisions (change sets) of the Origin Folder,you can double-click a row to see the details of exactly what files were checked in for that transaction.