About replaying "evil" merges... Re: [PATCH v5 3/3] rebase: add a config option for --rebase-merges

Hi Alex,

Heads up: This mail is totally a tangent and is _not_ intended to distract
from the patch series.

On Sun, 12 Mar 2023, Alex Henrie wrote:

[...] Glen thinks that in the future we might have some kind of
rebase-evil-merges mode as well, and that that might become the default.

While it probably won't be the default, like, ever, I can well imagine
that there would be a good opportunity to add a config setting to make it
the default _for that user_.

About implementing that mode... I recently picked up a repair item from my
ever-growing TODO list to brush up that "replay merge conflict resolutions
and amendments" idea of Phillip's that I had implemented already four
years ago (only to find out that it unfortunately caused a lot of nested
merge conflicts when using it on Git for Windows' branch thicket; I tried
my best to add a test case demonstrating the problematic behavior).

While I had to stop working on it again, I at least left a rebased version
at https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/1491 (in case anybody is
interested where I wanted to take this PR, I left comments describing the
changes I had planned on looking into).

I mention this PR here in this thread not so much to derail the review, or
even to distract from this patch series (I really detest when that happens
in reviews of my own patches, so please accept my apology in advance
should that happen here, it is _really_ not my intention), but as a point
in favor of Glen's suspicion that we might get such a mode in the future
to replay evil merges or merges with resolved conflicts.

Ciao,
Johannes