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Re: inexplicable failure to merge recursively across cherry-picks

From
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date
Oct 10, 2007, 19:35 UTC
Message-ID
<alpine.LFD.0.999.0710101231130.20690@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To
<20071010190757.GP23810@genesis.frugalware.org>
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Miklos Vajna wrote:
> 
> Actually, specifically darcs, different merges _always_ result in the same
> data.
No they don't. You don't understand the problem.

Yes, different merges WITH THE SAME PATCHES always result in the same data.

But that's not a realistic - or even very interesting - schenario.

What's much more common is that the same problem gets solved slightly differently in two different branches. For example, maybe somebody does it as two different patches - where the second one fixes a bug in the first fix. And another person does the same fix, but without the bug in the first place.

See? A patch-based system gets confused by those kinds of issues (or they turn into various special cases). And that is fundamentally why you MUST NOT take history into account (where "history" is some series of individual patches).

Yes, history is interesting for historical reasons, and to explain what the context was, but in many ways, history is exactly the *wrong* thing to use when it comes to merging. You should look at the end result, since people can - and do - come to the same result through different ways.

			Linus
Previous: Miklos VajnaNext: Miklos Vajna
Message 8 of 11 in “inexplicable failure to merge recursively across cherry-picks”
  1. martin f krafftOct 10, 2007
  2. Linus TorvaldsOct 10, 2007
  3. martin f krafftOct 10, 2007
  4. David KastrupOct 10, 2007
  5. Linus TorvaldsOct 10, 2007
  6. David BrownOct 10, 2007
  7. Miklos VajnaOct 10, 2007
  8. Linus TorvaldsOct 10, 2007
  9. Miklos VajnaOct 11, 2007
  10. Sam VilainOct 11, 2007
  11. Linus TorvaldsOct 11, 2007

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