Proper use of Merge Branches

[bdesmond]

I'm wondering what the proper way to use merge brances is.

I have a website in vault, and then I have a branch, which is always whatever is on the live site. Whenever I'm ready to push an update, I first merge the dev tree with the branch.

My question is when I get the the step which prompts me to select revisions, do I only need to select the most current revision of the source, or all the way back to the previous merge? Or, even better, is this the right way/easiest way to accomplish what I'm doing?

[ericsink]

The Merge Branches wizard is presenting you with a list of changes, and you are supposed to select which changes you want to apply from the origin to the target. So, if you only want to merge the latest change, only select it. But it sounds like what you want is to select everything back to the previous merge.

Your usage sounds fine, although do ask yourself if it might be overkill. Do you really need two branches? If you have a substantial team working on both branches, yes. Many websites can easily get by with a single branch, deploying to a staging server to verify things before publishing to the live server.