-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Linus Torvalds wrote:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:
quoted
So yes, merges are the situation where renames are normally considered a
"problem", but it's actually not nearly the most every-day situation at
all.
Btw, this is a pet peeve of mine, and it is not at all restricted to
the SCM world.
I guess I don't mind a bit of high-mmv discussion, so long as it doesn't
get in the way of real work. Polishing these kinds of things seems to
fall in the category of 10% of functionality that takes 90% of effort.
Of the rest, most by far need some trivial 3-way merging. And the ones
that have trouble? In practice, that trivial and maligned 3-way does
_better_ than anything more complicated.
I think the great motivator for exploring other merge algorithms has
been criss-cross merge. There are some workflows (e.g. the Launchpad
workflow) in which heavy mesh-merging takes place, leading to frequent
criss-crosses.
Bog-standard three-way doesn't handle that criss-cross very well. I
understand git uses recursive three-way in that situation.
The other motivator has been cherry-picking.
So I'm happy that people are trying to devise merge algorithms that are
better than three-way. When someone gets it right, we'll implement it.
And then there are other more incremental tweaks, like
merge-across-indent and merge-across-line-ending-change that I'd like to
see.
Go to revctrl.org for prime example of this. I think half the stuff is
about merge algorithms, some of it is about glossary, and almost none of
it is about something as pedestrian and simple as performance and
scalability.
Partly this is because of Bram's interests. AIUI, he started with a
merge algorithm and built a VCS around it.
(Actually, to be honest, I think some of the #revctrl noise has become
better lately.
I used to spend time on #revctrl, but I think that was before you
started visiting. Too bad I missed ya.
So maybe at least this area is getting more about
real every-day problems, and less about the theoretical-but-not-very-
important issues).
It wouldn't surprise me if the early phases of VCS development tended
toward more theoretical discussion, just because so many questions are open.
Aaron
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFFOR3D0F+nu1YWqI0RAo5lAJ99+5ShvLXaVIRG1A8XN7HRicoPngCeLO+y
meMZVcjdX7AX9JCfhSN5uK4=
=AI8p
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----