Q:

Crystal Report + SVN merging branches

I'm working on a big C# project that use Crystal Reports to generate pdf, excel and word report files.  
Project is under SVN repository and we have the main trunk and a separate branch. 
Every week we use to merge trunk into the branch but .rpt files are problematic to merge due to their binary content. 
Is there a tool or a best prectice to manage this situation? 

A:

For one of my past project, I used to require CR developer to add the report description to the SVN repository.  You can generate it in Crystal Report from the "Export as > Report Definition" menu or something like this.  They are text files representing the structure of the reports. 
Then with some pre-commit hook scripting, you can require the existence of such a definition for every rpt file, would it be for addition or modification. 
You should also be able to automate such meta-data generation using something like RptToXml, or maybe the diff tools supplied by ReportMiner. 
This at least address the diff problem with the report files.  For the merge part, maybe you can find a way to import the Report Definition, but at least you should be able to know from where a potential conflict comes from.