Keyword Expansion and Merging Branches

[andrews]

We have hundreds of .c, .cpp and .h files with keyword expansion in the header comments, recording such information as the modified date, the revision and the file's "Archive" (its location in the repository). Each of these is quite valuable in various ways ... but when it comes to merging branches its a nightmare.

We have hundreds of files with "Needs Merge" status, that we have to look at one by one. 90% have no changes other than conflicting Keyword Expansion values in the header comments. To complete the merge we have to go through each of these files, manually, one by one, checking to see if there are any _real_ conflicts other than the header ones. It is painstaking and prone to human error.

Therefore I'd like to request an enhancement - an option for the Merge process to ignore Keyword Expansion conflicts. It would make a huge difference for us.

We've also noticed a bug that seems to occur quite often - a file with Edited or Needs Merge status; you run Show Differences to execute DiffMerge, which then tells you the files are identical.

[Beth]

I have noted your request. You could try as a working around going into the admin web page to temporarily turn off keyword expansion until after the merge.
F: 9515

On seeing items that have a different status than what a Diff says, you might want to try having Vault use CRCs to detect differences. That is in the Vault Tools - Options - Local Files. Without that, some minor things such as a time stamp change or extra space would be viewed as a change. The Diff tool is usually configured to ignore the time stamps and spaces or blank lines.

[andrews]

Yes, we're using CRC & still seeing that problem occur. Its just an annoyance really as nothing will happen with those files when we hit Commit - the merge problem is the real nuisance at the moment. We'll try the workaround you suggested, thanks

[Beth]

If you have any further questions or any updates on how things are working for you after the workaround, just let me know.