switch won't let me switch with a pending merge

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Robert Collins wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> :!bzr switch trunk
> bzr: ERROR: Pending merges must be committed or reverted before using
> switch.
>
> shell returned 3
>
> :!bzr switch trunk --force
> bzr: ERROR: Pending merges must be committed or reverted before using
> switch.
>
>
> affects bzr
> status confirmed
> importance high
>
> This gets in the way of being able to correct after merging *and fixing*
> into the wrong branch. There is no good technical reason to prevent this
> switch operation. And if the branch I'm bound to had gone away for some
> reason - e.g. url changing - then not permitting it would wedge me as a
> client.

So there are certain situations where handling a pending merge would be
quite problematic. Options:

1) The target branch is at exactly the same revision as the current
branch tip. Switch is trivial here, since it should just point to the
new location.

2) The target branch is at a different revision.

At this point, how do you resolve the new update merge? I suppose it is
the same as the 'bzr update' case, so you just merge in the basis
changes. I guess it just seems like a great way to end up with
hard-to-diagnose merge conflicts.

3) What if the target branch is at the revision that you have merged, or
if the newly merged revision is now in the ancestry of the new branch tip?

John
=:->

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