'svn merge --record-only' is the recommended way for users to manually declare
that a merge has happened for the purposes of manually working out a tough
merge, or for blocking some changes from being included in a blanket merge, etc.
Unfortunately, with Subversion 1.8 I can trigger an error in this functionality
that was not present in Subversion 1.7.
$ svn co -q http://svnbook.googlecode.com/svn/branches/1.7/en svnbook-1.7-en
$ svn merge --record-only ^/trunk/en -c4516 svnbook-1.7-en/
--- Merging r4516 into 'svnbook-1.7-en':
C svnbook-1.7-en/book/ref-svnrdump.xml
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge of r4516 into 'svnbook-1.7-en':
U svnbook-1.7-en
Summary of conflicts:
Tree conflicts: 1
subversion/svn/util.c:548,
subversion/libsvn_client/merge.c:11850,
subversion/libsvn_client/merge.c:11740,
subversion/libsvn_client/merge.c:9867,
subversion/libsvn_client/resolved.c:80,
subversion/libsvn_wc/conflicts.c:3067,
subversion/libsvn_wc/wc_db.c:8468,
subversion/libsvn_wc/wc_db.c:8369,
subversion/libsvn_wc/wc_db.c:8354: (apr_err=SVN_ERR_WC_PATH_NOT_FOUND)
svn: E155010: The node
'/home/cmpilato/tests/svnbook-1.7-en/book/ref-svnrdump.xml' was not found.
$
The same thing, this time using a recent 1.7.x build:
$ _svn17 -q co http://svnbook.googlecode.com/svn/branches/1.7/en svnbook-1.7-en
$ _svn17 merge --record-only ^/trunk/en -c4516 svnbook-1.7-en/
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge of r4516 into 'svnbook-1.7-en':
U svnbook-1.7-en
$
My guess is that in 1.8, this functionality is trying to be intelligent when, in
fact, some degree of ignorance is the best gift it gives to users. After all,
if a *real* merge was going to be easy to do, they'd just do a real merge
instead of manual mods and a --record-only merge.
Bug
Major