We have two streams sharing a single component. Changes only go from Source to Target. We've created a repository workspace specifically for doing the merge - it flows with both streams, but Target is both the default and current stream.

We merge changes from Source to Target once per week. A specific developer has the responsibility to do the merge every week.

I'm finding merge to be such a miserable experience that I'm wondering
if we're doing it wrong.

We have two streams sharing a single component. Changes only go from
Source to Target. We've created a repository workspace specifically
for doing the merge - it flows with both streams, but Target is both
the default and current stream.

We merge changes from Source to Target once per week. A specific
developer has the responsibility to do the merge every week.

In our initial condition, the repository workspace is one week behind
Target. So we first accept into that workspace all incoming change
sets. This is always trivial. We change the definition to the
repository work space to use Source as the current stream. Now we
have many incoming change sets, with some potential conflicts.

We accept the incoming changes.

Problem #1: the most common conflict is a content conflict, but I
don't think I've ever seen auto-resolve actually work. I've given up
on even trying. Does anybody understand the rules for when
auto-resolve will actually merge a file?

Problem #2: When we try to resolve the conflict (by preference using
Beyond Compare as our external comparison tool), we're offered a
two-way comparison. This is pretty miserable, as we now get to guess
which changes we need to keep and which to discard. We end up
doubling back to diff the changes in the original streams and try to
figure out the right choice from there.

So we fight our way through each conflict, resolving it by hand with
extra windows open. When we have them all finished, we then change
the repository workspace configuration to restore Target as the
current stream. New incoming changes are accepted trivially, and
then we can deliver the new change sets to Target.


What makes me feel like "we're doing it wrong" is the fact
that we aren't getting a three way compare. Is our process broken?

Prior Art:

Resolving Conflicts with Jazz
Source Control
Multi-Stream
Development
How to do Parallel
Streams?