Re: [PATCH v3 0/2] git-gui: change to display the combined diff in the case of conflicts.

[Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com>]

What about the safe (but complicated) diff -c by default (to prevent
misinformed Use Remote/Local decisions, by default) and a "Conflicts
Only" option (disabled by default) that shows the diff --cc output for
those who know what they are doing?

jon.

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:39 PM, Johannes Sixt <j.sixt@viscovery.net> wrote:
> Am 3/31/2010 13:12, schrieb Jon Seymour:
>>> I looked at the result, but it does not convince me. In my case, I have a
>>> large file that has many changes between the "maint" and "master"
>>> branches. Whenever there are conflicts after merging "maint" to "master",
>>> I see all these changes, and really they *are* uninteresting.
>>>
>>
>> I think you may have missed the point of my patch.
>>
>> The successfully merged lines may be uninteresting from the point of
>> deciding what I should *do* but they
>> are highly relevant to the question of what I really, really should *not* do.
>
> How would you decide that if you cannot read the information that is
> presented to you?
>
> Can you tell without thinking for 10 seconds which of these two changes is
> lost if you choose "Use local version"?
>
> @@@ ... @@@
>  x
>  +foo
>  y
> @@@ ... @@@
>  a
> - bar
>  b
>
> Oh, it's easy for the conflicted part of the diff, which you'll see
> elsewhere as well:
>
> @@@ ... @@@
>  r
> ++<<<<<<< HEAD
>  +foo
> ++=======
> + bar
> ++>>>>>>> some-branch
>  s
>
> Do not forget that in a case (like mine) where the non-condensed diff is
> actually huge, the conflict markers would no exactly be easy to find in
> the diff.
>
>> If there are 100 successfully merged lines from each side of the merge
>> but only 2 conflicting lines, should I
>>
>> a) pick the remote branch
>> b) pick the local branch
>> c) manually edit the conflicting line (or use a merge tool)
>>
>> The point of my patch it to make it much more likely that you will pick c).
>
> And I was saying almost the same, namely that it should not only be "much
> more likely" to pick c, but to *always* pick c (by making it the only
> option available).
>
>> In the current state, the GUI doesn't make it clear that either a) or
>> b) is almost certainly a huge mistake.
>
> And therefore I suggest to disable these options.
>
>> Now, you could disable Use Remote and Use Local for all but the very
>> simplest cases - but you don't need it for these
>> cases. Hell, ed would do for these.
>
> Which are those very simplest cases that you are referring to? If you mean
> modify/delete conflicts, then I indeed would like to keep the options for
> them.
>
> That said, your earlier patch that presented the diff against HEAD was not
> bad after all.
>
> -- Hannes
>