Resolving Files with TextMate, Subversion, and FileMerge

If you're new or semi-new to TextMate and you're collaborating with someone on the same development project, file change collisions are inevitable.  Textmate has nice support for resolving file conflicts when they show up after updating to the latest SVN depot revision.

Note: This post assumes you are on a Mac :^).

Some Context

Suppose your TextMate directory navigator looks like this after you update to SVN 'head':

At this point, trying to commit info.rhtml back to SVN will fail, showing the following:

The Procedure

1. Alt-Shift-A on info.rhtml (the file without ".mine", ".r298", or anything else appended to it) and select Resolve Conflicts with FileMerge...

2. The FileMerge utility now appears.  Select the first red arrow (a conflict) to highlight it.

3. Select one of the FileMerge options from the lower-right select box:

4. Repeat the previous step until all conflicts have been assigned to the left, right, or both.

5. BEFORE you close the FileMerge window, press Apple-S.  Now, if you open your file (info.rhtml in this example) in TextMate, you'll see that the "<<<<<<< .mine", "=======", and ">>>>>>> .r298" markup has dissapeared. 

6. At this point, you may notice that all those extra ".mine" and ".r298" files are still there in your TextMate navigator.  To solve this, Alt-Shift-A and select Resolved.

Now, you can merrily check-in to SVN.

Comments

[Shep McKee]

Did I miss something? When did Ben make "the switch"?

[Benjamin Booth]

Hey, Shep! I moved to the Mac when I left webMethods. I loaded up one of them new fangled Intel Mac Powerbooks and never looked back. Well... actually I do look back, occasionally, to XP on Parallels. Quicken's sad online excuse for time tracking only supports IE.