why does merge command sometimes not carry meta-data?

[Andrew Straw]

Ben Finney wrote:
> 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?
>
>   
Yes, the merge is done as you wrote it (modulo the revision numbers
being changed, of course).
>> 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).
>   
OK, I will endeavor to repeat this behavior on a publicly available
branch, but it may be some time - it's deadline time for me at the
moment. I'm still not sure it's a bug. FWIW, this is bzr 1.3.1.

I was hoping there might be a quick reply with a cure for my ignorance.
(At least on this one particular topic.)

-Andrew