On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 23:40, Klaim <mjklaim@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 22:20, Steven Watanabe <watanabesj@gmail.com> wrote:
If you will recall, the question I started out with
is: "What about a distributed version control system
makes merging easier?"  That question remains unanswered.

Hi!

Sorry to interrupt, but I just googled this question (in fact directly used keywords in stackoverflow) and got this question/answer that might (or might not) clarify the "why" : 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43995/why-is-branching-and-merging-easier-in-mercurial-than-in-subversion

This other question/answer might help too as the question is formulated as :

"I often read that Hg (and Git and...) are better at merging than SVN but I have never seen practical examples of where Hg/Git can merge something where SVN fails (or where SVN needs manual intervention). Could you post a few step-by-step lists of branch/modify/commit/...-operations that show where SVN would fail while Hg/Git happily moves on? Practical, not highly exceptional cases please..."

Reading it all is long but might help too to understand the underlying reasons about the easier merge statement.

Joël Lamotte