**Is there some way to force some files to not be merged automatically (force me to manage the merge) when merging a branch back into the main tree?** 

For example, I have web.config files that have specific paths based on whether I'm in the Dev or Production system. So, when I need to merge my dev branch back into main, I don't want to modify some of the tags, but other information might need to be updated.

The problem is that the merge may automatically update the settings that need to remain the same. I can easily revert back to the original, but then any new settings would be lost. It seems to be the easiest way to handle this would be for me to manually merge the changes in this case. 

It's possible I'm coming at this from the wrong direction since I'm new to Tortoise and SVN.

In addition to the config example that has some good answers below. **Is there a way to force all files to be handled manually during a merge?** It seems like there should be a flag that could be applied to the files to simply make it look like there is a conflict to the flagged file and to handle the merge accordingly.