Re: [PATCH 7/7] xdiff: make diff3 the default conflictStyle

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Cc: "Johannes Sixt" <j6t@kdbg.org>,
	"David Aguilar" <davvid@gmail.com>,
	"Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>,
	"Sergey Organov" <sorganov@gmail.com>,
	"Bagas Sanjaya" <bagasdotme@gmail.com>,
	"Elijah Newren" <newren@gmail.com>,
	"Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
	"Denton Liu" <liu.denton@gmail.com>,
	git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 7/7] xdiff: make diff3 the default conflictStyle
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2021 12:31:03 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YMI+R5LFTj7ezlZE@coredump.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <60c2373b93140_b25b1208c2@natae.notmuch>

On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 11:00:59AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:

> > I didn't look too deeply at your example, but I suspect it may be
> > related to the fact that diff3 does not try to minimize the conflicts as
> > much (and then the recursive merge on top of that piles on extra layers
> > of confusion).
> > 
> > There's a lot more discussion in this old thread:
> > 
> >   https://lore.kernel.org/git/20130306150548.GC15375@pengutronix.de/
> 
> Geezus. My patches always end up kicking the hornest nest don't they?
> 
> Maybe it would make sense to revive the zdiff3 patch and attempt to make
> that the default. That would take a lot of time though, so it wasn't as
> easy as just flipping a switch from "merge" to "diff3".

I had that patch in my daily build for several years, and I would
occasionally trigger it when seeing an ugly conflict. IIRC, it
segfaulted on me a few times, but I never tracked down the bug. Just a
caution in case anybody wants to resurrect it.

-Peff