Why did my tortoise svn merge a file and not conflict it?

I changed a file locally and then I updated the repository and someone else 开发者_如何学运维had updated the file. However Instead of a conflict coming up and me having to go in and diff the file and select which portions from which file to use it looks like tortoise svn just merged the file instead...

That just means everything went well. You get a conflict only when your versioning tool (svn) can't merge the two versions of a file properly.

Without knowing the details I can only guess, but if your changes wasn't in conflict with the other persons changes, then Subversion will happily merge without producing a conflict.

As a test, try adding a file with 10 numbered lines, branch it, then in one branch change the first line and in the other branch change the last line, then attempt the merge and you should observe the same happening again.

If the changes are overlapping or close to each other, you'll get merge conflicts.