Re: Improving merge of tricky conflicts

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 21, 2021, 21:08 UTC
Message-ID: <YAntTS6UQIUWZngD@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CANiSa6jsjrm-i+T1zSBMFqpUqy-PJpai39JtH47m=v1TO_fi4A@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 10:30:36AM -1000, Martin von Zweigbergk wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> > I think rather than thinking of these as expanded conflict markers, it
> > would probably be a more useful workflow to just look at the diff in a
> > separate command (so just show the conflicts, not everything else, and
> > just show the diff). I suspect it could be made pretty nice with some
> > simple editor support (e.g., open a new buffer in the editor showing the
> > diff for just the current hunk, or even the current _half_ of the hunk
> > you're on).
> 
> At some point it seems better to delegate to a proper merge tool. You
> said that you use vim, so I'm a little surprised that you use conflict
> markers instead of using vimdiff. I don't use vim and I've never
> really used vimdiff. I still use conflict markers, mostly out of
> habit, but also because I usually run in a tmux session on a remote
> machine. I feel like I should try to switch to meld.

Yeah, I think your first sentence might be the most important takeaway. ;)

I have tried using vimdiff in the past, but didn't really like it. My recollection is that it was clunky to navigate, and I could fix most conflicts much faster just by looking at them. But I have never been a heavy user of the multi-window multi-buffer stuff in vim. My "open a new buffer in the editor" is probably a lie; for me it is more like "open a new terminal and run a command at the shell". :)

-Peff