Re: [PATCH] Enable and fix support for base less merges.

[Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>]

Fredrik Kuivinen <freku045@student.liu.se> writes:

> Anyway, the idea I have thought about is to use (probably
> base64-encoded) xdelta diffs for the binary files. With this approach
> git diffs could look like:
>
> diff --git --xdelta a/foo b/foo
> <base64-encoded xdelta data>
>
> Is this approach reasonable?

If we continue to operate within 3-way merge paradigm of
"merging his changes to common ancestor into mine", more
appropriate would be to make the use of "merge" a bit more
configurable.  As HPA mentioned, XML for example is a text file
not binary, but textual merge of it often produces less than
usable results, especially when it is machine generated, meant
to be consumed by machines, and optimized for compactness.  Just
like we made merge strategy backends pluggable to git-merge,
strategy backends, after making their own decision on what 3
blobs to use for 3-way file-level merge, can be told which
low-level merge program to use (merge, diff3, wiggle, ...).