On 8/23/13 10:34 AM, Les Mikesell wrote: > I can't, off the top of my head, think of a scenario where it would be > harmful to replace an unversioned directory with a versioned instance, > leaving any unversioned local files that happen to be there alone.
Leaving unversioned local files alone in a directory is not the problem. I've personally ran into scenarios where the local directory contained unversioned local files that obstruct a file that will be added by a switch/update/merge/what-have-you. If the local file's content matches the content in the repository, then I think it is safe to simply replace the unversioned local file with the versioned file from the repository. Often, the content has not been the same. It all depends on a lot of factors such as how it became unversioned, what has happened to the file while it was unversioned, etc. Replacing the content of the local file with the content in the repository looses local data. Merging the unversioned content and the versioned content usually result in poor merges (in the best case scenario) because there is no base revision to use in the 3-way merge. I've seen merges like this get committed accidentally and cause havoc. Of course, using the unversioned local content instead of merging the content from the repository could accidentally replace the entire contents of the file and this can accidentally get committed as well. Subversion needs the user's help to figure out what to do and marks these conflicts as tree conflicts.
