Re: [PATCH 0/3] merge -Xindex-only

From: Thomas Rast <trast@inf.ethz.ch>
Date: Jul 9, 2013, 12:08 UTC
Message-ID: <878v1gey16.fsf@linux-k42r.v.cablecom.net>
In-Reply-To: <51DBDB6F.7090105@alum.mit.edu>

Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> Since you've already implemented a way to merge into the index (even an
> alternative index) without touching the working copy, I'll just cross my
> fingers and hope for the appearance of an option that makes merge leave
> HEAD, MERGE_HEAD, etc. untouched.

The most annoying part is probably where to put the output, since merging is more or less defined to do one of:

- update HEAD and return 0
- update MERGE_HEAD and return 1

I'm not sure how much flexibility is worth having. Would it be sufficient if you had an option, e.g. -Xresult-ref=refs/heads/foo, that changes it to:

- update refs/heads/foo and return 0
- return 1, not updating any refs

That would mean that it would only work for noninteractive use. In the conflicting case, the driving script would need to remember what it wanted to merge so as have the information when finally committing.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch