[Gnu-arch-users] Re: identical changes conflict

[Deliverable Mail]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:10:28 +0100, Peter Conrad <address@hidden> wrote:
 > But there *is* a conflict. Maybe you *want* the line to be added twice.
> How should tla know?

I believe that's the real problem with the locality of relative diffs
tla uses.  When I let tla go first, I was stunned that it just did
that -- added  the line twice!  It flew in the face of the intuitive
expectation that, if the most recently committed remote file and the
modified local file conflict only in the same diff location which turn
out to be modified _identically_, they are, well (duh!) identical, and
_therefore_ there's no conflict!  I think it'a a drastic demonstration
why diff is not the best thing to use.  E.g., darcs does detect the
conflict but in such a way as to show it's still the same line.  It
doesn't just go add the line twice -- why, it was not added twice into
the original commit!  The result of the propagation of the change, a
file with the two identical lines, is a heretofore unseen beast, and
tla does that silently to you.  Hmm...

Cheers,
Alexy