Question

I have 2 repositories. As the trunk code was in one repository, which was protected, I did a checkout and then checked in to the other repository (as users did not have permission to the first protected one).

Now the issue is that both the repositories have been worked on and we wish to finally merge the code/branch in the second unprotected one with the protected one. But, there will be conflicts in these.

Is there a way to find out the diff for the 2 repository branches?
Also, if there are whitespace changes, how do I ignore those?

Answer 1

I don’t know of a built-in subversion feature that would allow this, but you could create a complete checkout of both repositories and use the command line diff utility to compare both working copies:

diff -w -u -r -N WorkingCopy1 WorkingCopy2

-w to ignore all Whitespace
-u to use the unified diff format (like subversion)
-r for recursive
-N to let new files appear in the patch

It’s surely not the fastest approach, but might be acceptable for a one-time process. You can also create a patch by redirecting the output to a file diff -w -u -r -N WorkingCopy1 WorkingCopy2 > wc1-to-wc2.patch

If you’re running windows, win32 builds of diff and patch can be found here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/diffutils.htm