Question

I have a subversion repository that has a project that I updated to earlier. (switched to .net 4.0 and newer visual studio), however, the client wasn’t ready for the change so I’ve checked out a slightly older version of the project and I’ve made a few changes.

Subversion won’t let me commit the new changes because it’s out of date. I can understand this behavior, but I want to override it. How can I do this?

Answer 1

I’m not sure if “overriding” this restriction would produce a desirable result. I guess the question becomes, what do you want to do with the changes between the old version and now?

If you want to just get rid of them:

• Reverse merge all the way back to the desired revision.
• Commit the reverse merge.
• Perform your changes and work from there.

If you want to send them to a branch:

• Branch off at the earlier revision.
• Merge the range of changes from that revision to the current revision into the branch and commit them.
• Perform the three steps above.

If you want to keep them in trunk as something that needs to happen, but just want to fast-track your new changes for the client to production:

• Branch off at the earlier revision.
• Make your changes there.
• Deploy from that revision of the branch.
• Merge the range of changes in your branch back into trunk and continue working.

Does that essentially cover what you’re looking to do? Or did I misinterpret you somewhere? With SVN things like this can get to be a bit of a pain. But trust me, merging changes in and out the way SVN wants you to is better than trying to trick SVN. The latter will cause more headaches in the long run.