[p4] Integrating deleted files

[Leonard, William C]

I wonder if the community has some suggestions on how to handle the
following scenario.

You have a Main branch, from which you branch a Release1.0 and
Release2.0 branches.  Release2.0 is an evolutionary branch, with lots of
changes.  Release1.0 is a maintenance branch for support and minor
enhancements while you wait for customers to upgrade to 2.0.  The Main
branch contains all the changes from both of these branches.

Now, Release2.1 is branched from Release2.0 to support your 2.0
customers with some fixes and enhancements.

Meanwhile, file A is deleted in the Release1.0 branch.  (Yes, I know
that's to be avoided, but it does happen occasionally.  In one example,
it caused a build problem.)  Then, Release1.1 is branched from
Release1.0 to support the 1.0 customers with fixes and enhancements.  So
the situation now is that Release1.0 has a deleted revision of file A;
Release1.1 doesn't have file A at all; Release2.1 has file A still
active (not deleted).

Now we integrate the changes from Release1.1 to Release2.1 to pick up
the fixes/enhancements in 1.1.  But file A is not deleted in Release2.1,
because Release1.1 has no record at all of that file.  (At least, that's
what I surmise happened.)

We only discovered this situation sort of by accident, but it turns out
to have happened several times now that we know to look for it.  Any
advice on how this should be handled so that it doesn't happen in the
future?  It's pretty hard to detect after the fact, so I'd rather
prevent it to begin with if possible.

Thanks,

William Leonard
Executive Manager
Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I) Division
Intergraph Corporation
P.O. Box 6695, Huntsville, AL 35824-0695 USA 
P 1.256.730.8167   F 1.256.730.1717
bill.leonard at intergraph.com <mailto:firstname.lastname at intergraph.com> ,
www.intergraph.com