Re: [PATCH 1/2] Change default merge backend from recursive to ort

Hi Philippe,

On Mon, Aug 2, 2021 at 8:56 PM Philippe Blain
[off-list ref] wrote:

Hi Elijah,

Le 2021-07-31 à 20:07, Elijah Newren via GitGitGadget a écrit :

quoted

From: Elijah Newren <redacted>


   * `git diff AUTO_MERGE` -- ability to see what changes the user has
     made to resolve conflicts so far (see commit 5291828df8 ("merge-ort:
     write $GIT_DIR/AUTO_MERGE whenever we hit a conflict", 2021-03-20)


The last three have been implemented already (though only one has been
submitted upstream so far;

 From what I could find this indeed only refers to your 5291828df8 (merge-ort:
write $GIT_DIR/AUTO_MERGE whenever we hit a conflict, 2021-03-20).
This is a very nice improvement, but I noticed it is not mentioned in the doc.
Do you plan to update the 'git diff' doc to mention that special ref ?
(And maybe also gitrevisions(5), where most of the special refs are listed ?)

Do you plan to implement a new '--auto-merge' option to 'git diff' as a shortcut
to 'git diff AUTO_MERGE', in order to hide a bit the special ref from users ?

Fair point, it probably does deserve to be documented somewhere, at
least once ort is the default merge algorithm.

I don't think it'd make sense to include a reference to it in
gitrevisions(5), since $GIT_DIR/AUTO_MERGE is a reference to a tree
rather than to a revision.  But documenting that special ref in
Documentation/git-diff.txt, and perhaps linking to it from other
conflict-related options (e.g. --base, --ours, --theirs) may make
sense.  Your --auto-merge idea may also make sense, and it'd be
somewhat similar to how git-rebase has a --show-current-patch option
that is shorthand for `git show REBASE_HEAD` and is documented as
such.  However, it might be confusing to users how to combine
--auto-merge with paths, whereas `git diff AUTO_MERGE -- pathname` is
pretty clear once you know that AUTO_MERGE is a tree you can diff
against.  Hmmm....