title: svn: merging changes from a branch to a working copy without updating trunk
body: <p>My development team recently doubled in size from one (myself) to two. As the sole developer, I was maintaining the trunk as the stable version of our software. I'd make changes in my working copy, test, and only push to trunk once I was sure it was stable. </p>
  
  <p>With the new team member we are trying to come up with the best flow for co-developing the codebase. We have decided that trunk will stay stable; changes are pushed there only after code review and thorough testing. The teammate will create <a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.branchmerge.commonpatterns.html" rel="nofollow">feature branches</a> for features he works on; when he requests a code review, I will do it and then once approved, he will merge the branch into trunk and delete the branch.</p>
  
  <p>We are both using eclipse and the <a href="http://subclipse.tigris.org/" rel="nofollow">subclipse</a> plugin to manage our working copies.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that while I can view differences between my working copy and his branch (Team -> Compare To -> Branch), I do not know how to get the code from his branch to merge with my working copy. I want to be able to get his changes without losing any local changes I have made, run his code locally, and have none of this affect trunk. That seems to rule out the option in Eclipse/SVN to switch to another branch/tag/revision, since I need to have his code merged with mine (in order to make sure my working copy's code is consistent with my local database).</p>
  
  <p>We've looked at the <a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.ref.svn.c.patch.html" rel="nofollow">SVN Patch</a> feature, instead of using branches perhaps he should send his changes over through a patch which I run?</p>
  
  <p>So the concrete question here is: how do I merge/incorporate changes from a branch with my working copy without touching trunk? I would also be grateful to get suggestions on how we should implement our workflow in a way that takes advantage of the power of svn and eclipse in a way I am missing.</p>