How can I move a directory onto an existing directory?

Question

I need to essentially merge changes on two trees, applying the changes from branch 2 to branch 1. I have trees like this:

media
├── cd
│   ├── 0
│   │   ├── file1
│   │   ├── file2
│   │   └── file3
│   ├── 1
│   │   ├── file1
│   │   ├── file2
│   │   └── file3
│   └── 2
│       ├── file1
│       ├── file2
│       └── file3
├── dvd
│   ├── 0
│   │   ├── file1
│   │   ├── file2
│   │   └── file3
│   ├── 1
│   │   ├── file1
│   │   ├── file2
│   │   └── file3
│   └── 2
│       ├── file1
│       ├── file2
│       └── file3
└── stuff
    ├── 0
    │   ├── file1
    │   ├── file2
    │   └── file3
    ├── 1
    │   ├── file1
    │   ├── file2
    │   └── file3
    └── 2
        ├── file1
        ├── file2
        └── file3

I've changed the files in my branch 2, and I need to apply them to branch 1. If I just try moving them over branch 1, I get the following errors:

mv: cannot move `/branch2/media/cd' to `/branch1/media/cd': Directory not empty.

Is there another command I should be using for this? mv -f doesn't seem to do the trick.

Answer 1

Why not use rsync instead?

rsync -a /branch2/media/ /branch1/media/

The reason why mv can't move /branch2/media/cd/ to /branch1/media is because /branch1/media already has a cd/ in it. mv refuses to clobber non-empty directories.

Answer 2

You would generally prefer using rsync or any other versioning tool.

If you still want to hack, you could start by removing the existing files in /branch1/media/ with find

find /branch1/media -type d -exec rm -rf {} \+

You then proceed to your move

for i in $(find /branch2/media -type d); do
    mv /branch2/media/$dir /branch1/media
done

You should probably tweak those commands a bit according to your environment, but no reason it wouldn't work.

PS be careful with the find -exec rm -rf call. I usually start by checking my find command with ls before using rm