Subversion branches

As one learns from the subversion book, in subversion there's no difference between a tag and a branch and subversion has no internal concept of a branch—it only knows how to make copies.

What subversion's branching does to Configuration Items is actually splitting a CI family into two different ones (that are referred by two different URLs). And from that moment on they have to be treated differently on both physical and logical levels.

Configuration Items in subversion don't have version trees; they are reduced to the stem poles.

The only way to put these two poles into one tree (which will also a be pole) is to make a merge, i.e. in order to be able to combine two CI families logically one needs to combine them physically first. Merging thus is the most important and absolutely necessary concept in subversion, as there is no decoupling between the physical and logical levels of representation.

-- TatyanaShpichko^? - 14 Sep 2007