Re: [ANNOUNCE] Example Cogito Addon - cogito-bundle

From: Aaron Bentley <aaron.bentley@utoronto.ca>
Date: Oct 20, 2006, 19:04 UTC
Message-ID: <45391DC3.7060002@utoronto.ca>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0610201110320.3962@g5.osdl.org>

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Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> 
> On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
>>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
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