What are Subversion root and tag branches?

FishEye identifies branches and tags in your Subversion repository by applying your specified SVN tag and branch structure.

The "root:" branch

Any files or directories that fall outside the tag and branch structure are identified as being on the special branch, "root:". Some directories will almost always fall outside this structure. In general, root directories of branches are considered to be on the "root:" branch. This means that any changeset in which a branch is created is considered to be on branch, "root:". Additionally, any files or directories that fall outside the defined structure will be assigned branch, "root:". If you're seeing a lot of files and changesets on "root:", you may need to update your branch and tag structure in FishEye and rescan your repository, or exclude parts of your repository that don't follow your defined structure.

"tag:" branches

When FishEye detects that a tag has been created, it looks at the files that were tagged and adds the tag as an annotation to those file revisions. No file revisions are created at this point.

If a tag is modified after it has been created and committed, FishEye promotes the tag to a branch to preserve the history of the modification. For example, a user may create the tag "build1" by copying "trunk" to "tags/build1". If they then modify contents of tags/build1, a new branch "tag:build1" will be created for the modification.