From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:23:50 GMT
Subject: Re: More merge questions
Message-ID: <7vek4xsx49.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <20051130131045.28149.qmail@science.horizon.com>

linux@horizon.com writes:

> 3) This says that if stage1 and state3 exist, use stage3.
>    3-way says if they're equal, delete the file, while if they're
>    unequal, it's fail.
>
> Given that it all matches up so nicely, I'd like to honestly ask if
> case 3 of the conditions is correct.  I'd think that if I deleted
> a file form te index, and the file wasn't changed on the head I'm
> tracking, the right resolution is to keep it deleted.  Why override
> my deletion?
>
> Sorry if this is a dumb question, but it's not obvious to me.

Funny that I asked exactly the same question when it was done
first:

	http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git&m=111804744926989

It was a question about then-current code, so other cases might
have been changed/corrected/enhanced since then, but I believe
the behaviour for the case in question here stays the same til
this day, and the response from Linus to that article still
applies.


	http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git&m=111807024201485

I'll quote only the punch line here, but the whole thing is
worth a read if you want to understand how this evolved and
what the design choices and decisions were:

  Right. We didn't lose anything hugely important. 

  In theory this could be a delete that we've missed, and we could add a 
  flag to actually reject this case. However, it's always easy to "recover" 
  deletes (just delete it again ;), so the loss of information is absolutely 
  minimal, and it allows starting from an empty index file.