Can somebody please explain to me why I need to be an expert at witchcraft & dark magic just to merge 2 SVN branches. And why the fuck anybody still uses SVN when there's git.

SVN is easy.

Shit can really hit the fan with GIT.

I would use SVN 10% of the time, if it had SOME of git functionalities.

Git, "Oh you changed that line to EXACT same value ? Enjoy this conflict and btw your PR is blocked"

@NoToJavaScript SVN literally hit me with this kind of mergeconflict. And with git you don't have to deal with the questions: "where do I merge what folder to what branch" you just merge the entire project root, inside the project. I've sunk an entire workday into this garbage and I'm still nowhere near completion.

Simply speaking, because SVN isn't really designed with merging in mind. The idea of branches is that you branch off and never move back.

There's no excuse for using it at all these days. Good tool in its day, but we're beyond it now.

@AlmondSauce

I even used cvs. In my “old” days. (Well, not that old. It was in 2007). It didn’t struck me as “bad”. But to be honest it was a bit of a shitshow the whole application we were working on.

Using java 1.3 with no generics in 2007 ? check. Cobol “back end” ? check.

People doing SQL from Java as they used to in cobol with (I don’t even know English term, The closest I can translate) “Ruptures” ? check.

Using a wild JWalk tool to rewamp Cobol screens to Java ? check.

OH YEAH ! AND ...... "Please make sure "enter" on a web page doesn't actually saves data, but goes to next input box. TAB should be used to show options list"

CVS was the least of my worriers.

Update: so after 2 Days of work we got the bastard to merge. This takes waaaaaaaaaaay to much time of well payed employes. Now let's see how fucked up the tomcat got.