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We use SVN at work and it's a nightmare there too, "mine" and "theirs" and whatnot. I frequently end up looking at historical versions just to verify which is which.

If I have a merge conflict I typically have to be very conscious about what was done in both versions, to make sure the combination works.

I wish for "working copy" and "from commit 1234 (branch xyz)" or something informative, rather than confusing catch-all terms.

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Please tell me you are using Git-SVN or Hg-SVN. Using bare SVN as a client hasn't been necessary in over a decade.

Using SmartSVN which makes life a fair bit better but still keeps this confusing terminology.

We'll be migrating to Git this year though so.

For reference, the codebase is over 20 years old, and includes binary dependencies like libraries. Makes it easy to compile old versions when needed, not so easy on the repository size...

That terminology is identical in git, likely inspired by cvs and svn, so that bit probably won't improve.

It's inherently confusing to juggle different trees, and clearly you need some terminology for it. At least this one has become a bit of a standard.

Main reason is we have relatively few merge conflicts despite merging a lot. So I always forget between instances.

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