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<p>This text is a work in progress—highly subject to
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<h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="svn.branchmerge.whatis"></a>What's a Branch?</h2>
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<p>Suppose it's your job to maintain a document for a division
in your company—a handbook of some sort. One day a different
division asks you for the same handbook, but with a few parts
<span class="quote">“<span class="quote">tweaked</span>”</span> for them, since they do things slightly
differently.</p>
<p>What do you do in this situation? You do the obvious: make
a second copy of your document and begin maintaining the two
copies separately. As each department asks you to make small
changes, you incorporate them into one copy or the other.</p>
<p>You often want to make the same change to both copies. For
example, if you discover a typo in the first copy, it's very
likely that the same typo exists in the second copy. The two
documents are almost the same, after all; they differ only in
small, specific ways.</p>
<p>
<a id="idp12076336" class="indexterm"></a>This is the basic concept of a branch—namely,
a line of development that exists independently of another line,
yet still shares a common history if you look far enough back in
time. A branch always begins life as a copy of something, and
moves on from there, generating its own history (see
<a class="xref" href="svn.branchmerge.whatis.html#svn.branchmerge.whatis.dia-1" title="Figure 4.1. Branches of development">Figure 4.1, “Branches of development”</a>).</p>
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<strong>Figure 4.1. Branches of development</strong>
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<img src="images/ch04dia1.png" alt="Branches of development" />
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<p>Subversion has commands to help you maintain parallel
branches of your files and directories. It allows you to create
branches by copying your data, and remembers that the copies are
related to one another. It also helps you duplicate changes
from one branch to another. Finally, it can make portions of
your working copy reflect different branches so that you can
<span class="quote">“<span class="quote">mix and match</span>”</span> different lines of development in
your daily work.</p>
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