Do you feel comfortable merging code?

Question

This morning, I read two opinions on refactoring.

• Opinion 1 (Page not present)
• Opinion 2 (Page not present)

They recommend branching (and s

Answer 1

Branched have to be managed correctly to make merging painless. In my experience (with Perforce) regular integration to the branch from the main line meant that the integration back into the main line went very smoothly.

There were only rare occasions when the merging failed. The constant integration from the main line to the branch may well have involved merges, but they were only of small edits that the automatic tools could handle without human intervention. This meant that the user didn't "see" these happening.

Thus any merges required in the final integration could often be handled automatically too.

Perforces 3-way merge tools were a great help when they were actually needed.