Resolve conflicts

Once in a while, you will get file conflicts when you update your files from the repository. A file conflict occurs when two or more developers have changed the same few lines of a file or the properties of the same file. As Subversion knows nothing of your project, it leaves resolving the conflicts to the developers. Whenever a conflict is reported, you should open the file in question, and try to analyse and resolve the conflicting situation.

Real conflicts vs mergeable conflicts

There are two types of conflicts. The real conflict (conflicted state) is obtained when a file in the working copy has incoming and outgoing changes in the same section. When updated the differences cannot be merged automatically so the file is marked as conflicted. A file can be in real conflict state when its content or its properties are in conflict. A folder can be in real conflict only when its properties are in conflict.

A file is in a mergeable conflict state when it contains both incoming and outgoing changes not necessarily in the same sections. A file is in mergeable conflict when its content has both incoming and outgoing changes but the changes can be merged by the update operation. A folder can be in mergeable conflict when it contains files in mergeable conflict and / or real conflict themselves. After an update it is possible that the state of conflict can be resolved automatically by merging the incoming changes into the working copy resource. A conflicting resource cannot be committed. In the conflict case the resource will be marked with a conflict icon and will appear in all the Synchronization trees.