Subversion: what does “Target path does not exist” when merging mean?

Question

Using subversion 1.5 I have branch B which was branched off of branch A. After doing work in both branches I go to merge changes from A into B (using svn merge http://

Answer 1

I had this problem because my trunk and the branch had a strange history.

Like this:

              /---------\
trunk -------+---+       +---\
                  \-----------BOOM!

Merging trunk -> branch didn't work.

Merging branch -> trunk worked though.

              /---------\
trunk -------+---+       +---+-----
                  \---------/

Probably because the trunk had better information about the last ancestor that they shared.

In my case, I wasn't ready to merge back to trunk, but I was able to create a new branch from the trunk and merge my old branch there.

              /---------\
trunk -------+---+       +---+-------
                  \           \---+--
                   \-------------/