Re: [RFC/PATCH] mergetool: use resolved conflicts in all the views

[David Aguilar <davvid@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 11:36 PM Seth House <seth@eseth.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 11:34:24PM -0600, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > I disagree. It's fine if you don't want to participate, but the fact
> > remains that the position that some tools would want to turn this off
> > hasn't been properly defended.
>
> If you are _genuinely_ interested in the answer to this question, please
> read the section in my post titled "Conflict Resolution" followed by the
> sub-section "Custom Merge Algorithm", and finally "Merge algorithms" [1]
> on Wikipedia. Then pretend you want to write your own conflict
> resolution algorithm for a new mergetool you've been dreaming up and ask
> yourself what versions of the conflicted file your tool will need.
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_(version_control)#Merge_algorithms
>
> Right now the algorithm Git uses is pretty best-in-class so it might
> seem unlikely that someone would want to write one of those. However
> a whopping *seven* of the tools surveyed do just that. Some of them even
> do a pretty good job (I've tried to point those out in the reviews).
> You're preoccupied with identifying a specific "adverse effect" but this
> debate isn't about that -- it's about giving individual tools the option
> to choose how they are used. If people out there want to try and write
> a better algorithm than Git, I want to see them try.
>
> That's the point I've been trying to drive home and that's the point
> that David also made in his last reply to you.
>
> On that note: you replied to David and said:
>
> > [Y]ou spend your time implementing this on top of my patch. That way
> > it's clear who made the mistake.
>
> I plan to start work on exactly that tomorrow. You made the initial
> patch so if you'd prefer to take it over the finish line yourself I'll
> defer. But if you're not interested then I would be happy to credit you
> and finish it.

Thanks Seth, I think your plan of action sounds pretty solid to me.

I'll be happy to review your patch.  Just a heads-up that Felipe has a
history on this list of creating long, never-ending, pointless rant
threads so sometimes the best course of action is to ignore him.

ciao,
David