[Monotone-devel] a little *-merge history

[Lapo Luchini]

Nathaniel J. Smith wrote:
> So, I've been thinking -- always dangerous -- about merging again

Ah!

I've done that dangerous thing too, and finally managed to read it all,
step by step, and finally been able if not to the extent of grokking, at
least to have a base understanding of that star-stuff (or is it
asterisk-stuff?).

For any latecomers (like me) in the mathematical theory of merges, I did
follow this path (I hope it doesn't miss too many steps):

unique-*-merge
2005-08-06 "[cdv-devel] more merging stuff (bit long...)"
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.monotone.devel/4297

multi-*-merge
2005-08-30 "improvements to *-merge"
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.revctrl/93

deterministic-*-merge
2007-01-12 "Deterministic *-merge"
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.revctrl/197

Reading them in order leads to a much better understanding of it all
than, for example, reading them in another order. Or, reading only one
of them after having read a couple of chapters of "A clockwork orange",
for instance. (then each "user" would be a "droog", each "merge" a
"SLIVAT'SYa" and so on...)
[disclaimer: I choose one of the Russian translation of the word "merge"
totally at random, I don't have fault if I chose one that is not good
enough for "merge as in revision control" or even a bad word, ah!]

OK, I definitely should not write e-mail at 3am, but after all that's
the very time NJS wrote the det-{star,asterisk}-stuff too ;)

>       a             a             a
>      / \           / \           / \
>     b*  b*        b*  b*        b*  b*
>    / \ / \       / \ / \       / \ / \
>   c*  b   c*    c*  b   c*    c*  b   c*
>    \ /   /       \   \ /       \ / \ /
>     #   /         \   #         #   #
>      \ /           \ /           \ /
>       c             c             c
> 
> Is that lower-right diagram not a thing of beauty?

Definitely =)

    Lapo