SVK::Command::Branch(3p)

NAME
SVK::Command::Branch - Manage a project with its branches

SYNOPSIS
 branch --create BRANCH [DEPOTPATH]

 branch --list [--all]
 branch --create BRANCH [--tag] [--local] [--switch-to] [--from|--from-tag BRANCH|TAG] [DEPOTPATH]
 branch --move BRANCH1 BRANCH2
 branch --merge BRANCH1 BRANCH2 ... TARGET
 branch --checkout BRANCH [PATH] [DEPOTPATH]
 branch --delete BRANCH1 BRANCH2 ...
 branch --setup DEPOTPATH
 branch --push [BRANCH]
 branch --pull [BRANCH]
 branch --offline [BRANCH]
 branch --online [BRANCH]

OPTIONS
 -l [--list]        : list branches for this project
 --listprojects     : list avaliable projects
 --create           : create a new branch
 --tag              : create in the tags directory
 --local            : targets in local branch
 --delete [--rm|del]: delete BRANCH(s)
 --checkout [--co]  : checkout BRANCH in current directory
 --switch-to        : switch the current checkout to another branch
                          (can be paired with --create)
 --merge            : automatically merge all changes from BRANCH1, BRANCH2,
                          etc, to TARGET
 --project          : specify the target project name
 --push             : move changes to wherever this branch was copied from
 --pull             : sync changes from wherever this branch was copied from
 --setup            : setup a project for a specified DEPOTPATH
 --from BRANCH      : specify the source branch name
 --from-tag TAG     : specify the source tag name
 -C [--check-only]  : try a create, move or merge operation but make no
                      changes
 -P [--patch] FILE  : Write the patch between the branch and where it was
                      copied from to FILE
 --export           : used with --checkout to create a detached copy
 --offline          : takes the current branch offline, making a copy
                      under //local
 --online           : takes the current branch online, pushing changes back
                      to the mirror path, and then switches to the mirror

DESCRIPTION
SVK provides tools to more easily manage your project's branching and merging, so long as you use the standard "trunk/, branches/, tags/" directory layout for your project or specifically tell SVK where your branches live.

Usage (without projects)
A very simple sample usage might be to checkout the trunk from a project you want to work on but don't have upstream commit rights for. This allows you to maintain a local branch and to send in patches.

Assuming you have alread mirrored this repository to //mirror/Project

    svk co //mirror/Project/trunk
or
    svk branch --co trunk //mirror/Project/

and then

    svk branch --offline

You're now working in a local branch, make local commits and changes as you need to. If you want to bring in changes from your remote repository, you can pull them down

    svk branch --pull

To see what changes you've made, you can create a patch between the local branch and the remote repository

    svk branch -P - --push

If you have commit rights to the remote repository, you can also

    svk branch --push

to send your changes.

You can use svk branch's branching capability in this mode, but it will be much friendlier if you set up a project

Usage (projects)
To initialize a project in a repository, run the setup command

    svk branch --setup //mirror/Project

If you have the standard trunk branches tags directories svk will offer them as the starting point. In fact, if you have trunk branches and tags directories, svk will try to use them without neeting --setup, but you won't be able to use the --project flag and will need to use depotpaths in commands.

The rest of this documentation assumes you've set up a project called Example in //mirror/Project

If you're in a working copy of svk where it can work out the Project name, you can leave off the --project flag from the examples below, but you can branch/tag/merge without having working copies

  Branching
To check out the trunk, you can run

    svk branch --co trunk --project Example

To create a branch for release engineering

    svk branch --create Exmaple-1.0-releng --project Example

Since you have a checkout of trunk already, you can convert that

    cd trunk
    svk branch --switch-to Example-1.0-releng

Or you can get a clean checkout

    svk branch --co Example-1.0-releng --project Example

If changes are made on trunk and you wish to bring them down to the release engineering branch, you can do that with the branch merge command

    svk branch --merge trunk Example-1.0-releng

If you're cautious, use the check flags first:

    svk branch -C --merge trunk Example-1.0-releng
    svk branch -P -  --merge trunk Example-1.0-releng

These will show you what svk wants to do.

Lets say you want to add a feature to trunk but work on a branch so you don't inconvenience others who are working on trunk:

    svk branch --create Feature --project Example

work on your feature, svk ci some changes

    svk branch --merge Feature trunk --project Example

continue to bring down changes several ways

    svk branch --pull
    svk branch --merge trunk Feature
    svk branch --merge trunk .   (if you're in a working copy of the branch)

and then merge back more feature work as you need to

To get rid of a branch when you're done with it

    svk branch --delete Feature --project Example

To see all of your branches, you can do:

    svk branch --list --project Example

  Tagging
If you've been working on your releng branch and are ready to cut a release, you can easily create a tag

    svk branch --tag --create 1.0rc1 --from Example-1.0-releng --project Example

If you would like to check out this tag, use

    svk branch --tag --co 1.0rc1 --project Example

Project Property Details
SVK branch also provides another project loading mechanism by setting properties on root path. Current usable properties for SVK branch are

  'svk:project:<projectName>:path-trunk'
  'svk:project:<projectName>:path-branches'
  'svk:project:<projectName>:path-tags'

These properties are useful when you are not using the standard "trunk/, branches/, tags/" directory layout. For example, a mirrored depotpath '//mirror/projA' may have trunk in "/trunk/projA/" directory, branches in "/branches/projA", and have a standard "/tags" directory. Then by setting the following properties on root path of remote repository, it can use SVK branch to help manage the project:

  'svk:project:projA:path-trunk => /trunk/projA'
  'svk:project:projA:path-branches => /branches/projA'
  'svk:project:projA:path-tags => /tags'

Be sure to have all "path-trunk", "path-branches" and "path-tags" set at the same time.