Tortoise SVN Merge Multiple Branches into Trunk
<p>I know merging with Tortoise SNV has been discussed (at length) but I cannot find an answer to my situation. I understand I can merge a dev branch into the trunk using the merge wizard, but what is the proper workflow if I want to merge <strong><em>multiple</em></strong> branches into the trunk?</p>

<p>In my situation, I created three dev branches (one for each developer) from a project trunk. Initially, the dev branches and the trunk were identical. The developers are also working in separate areas of the project, so multiple people are not working with the same files. So, for example, I have trunk, b1, b2, and b3 where <strong>trunk = b1 = b2 = b3</strong>.</p>

<p>Now, after some development, I want to merge the changes from each dev branch back into the trunk. This is where I am getting confused. I have read that you can simply merge each branch into the trunk, one at a time (committing the changes from each branch before merging the next one) since they all share the same ancestory and Tortoise is smart enough to know what should be changed. So:</p>

<pre><code>b1 -&gt; merge to trunk -&gt; commit trunk (now trunk has b1 changes)
b2 -&gt; merge to trunk -&gt; commit trunk (now trunk has b1 and b2 changes)
b3 -&gt; merge to trunk -&gt; commit trunk (now trunk has b1, b2, and b3 changes)
</code></pre>

<p>I have also read that you should merge the dev branch changes into the other dev branches, then merge into the trunk so that there are not overwrite issues (which I thought tortoise was smart enough to avoid). So:</p>

<pre><code>b3 -&gt; merge to b2 -&gt; commit b2 (now b2 has b3 changes)
b2 -&gt; merge to b1 -&gt; commit b1 (now b1 and b2 and b3 changes)
b1 -&gt; merge to trunk -&gt; commit trunk (now trunk has b1, b2, and b3 changes)
</code></pre>

<p>Please advise if one method is better than the other or if one is flawed. My concern is if I merge changes from one branch, then merge changes from another branch, I will be undoing changes from the first merge operation or causing issues with the metadata.</p>

<p>I am using <strong>TortoiseSVN Version 1.8.8, build 25755</strong> and <strong>Subversion 1.8.10</strong>.</p>

<p><strong>Thanks!</strong></p>