why does merge command sometimes not carry meta-data?

[Ben Finney]

Andrew Straw <strawman at astraw.com> writes:

> The trouble I'm having is that when I merge from -ads into -trunk,
> meta-data is lost. In other words, doing "bzr merge -r 1375..1378
> ../flydra-ads" in flydra-trunk seems to apply just a plain diff patch.
> There is no information about which revisions of the flydra-ads branch
> the merge corresponds to -- it will simply change flydra-trunk as if I
> made the changes there originally. "bzr status" doesn't show any pending
> merges.

That doesn't sound right.

> The situation is completely different when merging the other way, from
> flydra-trunk to flydra-ads. In this case, the meta-data is maintained,
> and "bzr status" will correctly show the pending merges.

Is the merge done with an equivalent command, i.e. a 'bzr merge -r
1283..1286 ../flydra-trunk' to guess? Or is there some other
difference which could help explain the different behaviour?

> Unfortunately, I cannot make these branches publicly available.

Can you make a minimal but complete example which shows the same
behaviour, and make those branches available? That would make it much
simpler (and constructing such a minimal example might even lead to a
better understanding of the problem).

-- 
 \       “You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I'll bet he |
  `\                         was glad to get rid of it.” —Groucho Marx |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney