Backporting

For general advice, see ​http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.branchmerge.copychanges.html

For GRASS, see Merge between branches (backporting).

Policies

Q: Should developers do it themselves? Or ask another dev to do it to keep some review sanity?

A: It depends: preferably a developer should be able to backport him/herself but

• do not break the release branch
• commit to the dev branch first
• make tests
• only fix bugs, do not introduce new features

If the latter is unclear, it should be discussed on the developers list. If in doubt, ask! In this case, a path/diff is appreciated.

Comparing branches

A diff tool like Kompare, Kdiff3, or Meld can help. These run the standard UNIX diff -u utility and show the results in an easy to navigate GUI.

You'll want to tell them to ignore the build files, svn paperwork files, compiled binaries, and "Last changed" timestamps on the help pages. This is typically done by going into the options and telling it to ignore a list of wildcard'ed path names, and regex filter for the document content.