[Monotone-devel] Re: [cdv-devel] more merging stuff (bit long...)

[Kevin Smith]

Bram Cohen wrote:
> Specifically, in this case:
>
> a
> |\
> b \
> |  \
> a   c
>
> The result should be c, since the b is toasted by a revision to a. 

As I said, I'm not an experienced merger, but based on my own experience 
and biases, I don't think that should be a clean merge. Or, more 
precisely, I would like to have some kind of option as to whether the 
system would treat that as a clean merge or not.

I would rather have slightly "too many" conflicts than slightly "too 
few". I tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to tools changing 
code without my approval.

> I call this behavior 'implicit undo'. It's very important behavior, since
> end users generally revert changes by manually setting back to old
> versions rather than explaining to the version control system what they're
> doing.

Perhaps, but I think I would rather it remain explicit, at least for my 
own work. Thus, I question whether "implicit undo" should be the default 
behavior, and even more so whether it should be the only behavior.

As I looked through each of your later examples, I didn't see one case 
where implicit undo would clearly benefit me, and several cases where it 
could hurt.

Perhaps in a perfect world, where all the tools were integrated, the 
graphical merge utility could indicate "implicit undo" conflicts 
differently than other conflicts, offering an easy way for the user to 
take the "recommended" resolution.

Maybe I'm way off base due to inexperience.

Kevin