Re: Collaborative conflict resolution feature request

From: Chris Torek <chris.torek@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 15, 2020, 17:32 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPx1GvdT6sZRtu8q1R9=fA-mE9pi1Ag-gKEzQfwbGap+KqSoSg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq1rmgxo67.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 10:11 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Assuming that there are paths A and B that would leave conflict in
> an attempted merge between commits X and Y, you somehow resolve the
> conflict in A and leave B unresolved, what would you pass to the
> other person and ask to resolve the conflicts in B?  It cannot be a
> merge commit that records X and Y as its parents and a single tree
> object as the result, because the whole point of this is that you do
> not even know what to record for B.
>
> I think the most important and useful part of this is to design the
> data format used for that task of passing from you to the other
> person.  The way to specify which paths are yours etc. are much less
> interesting and trivial part of the story, I would think.

I've thought about this (some) myself in the past. It seems to me that what is needed is the ability to pass the complete unmerged state on. That is, we need something like five commits, made in a way similar to the way a stash is made:

 * all resolved (stage 0) index entries (1 tree)
 * all index stage 1, 2, and 3 entries (3 trees)
 * and the current work-tree (1 tree)

This isn't quite complete as we also need the merge information; perhaps that goes into a sixth commit, or can be wedged into the commit message text of one (or more?) of the five trees.

The "resume unresolved merge" command then must unpack all of this into the appropriate places.

Chris