Re: Unexpected conflict with ort merge strategy?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 11, 2021, 19:41 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqfss2lbsv.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CABPp-BFAf+-ULwtd7WowsN2KSeJ0s1ucZZ1QSRYg8J+wM9MrZw@mail.gmail.com>

Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> TAKEAWAY: Whenever you are dealing with multiple files or directories
> that are near matches, the person doing merges/rebases/whatever really
> does need to be responsible to pay close attention to any such
> files/directories (and this is not new to merge-ort; it has always
> been an issue with merge-recursive as well).

One difference is that merge-recursive has fewer magic heuristics (for example, it did not have "my neighbours moved, so I should").

Less clever tools may burden the human users with more manual resolution in more cases, but when the heuristics work against the human user, it is easier to understand the situation (iow why/how the tool made a wrong decision) because they are more predictable.

It is a balancing act. We would prefer to see things more automated when there is no room for ambiguity, but a heuristics that works correctly 80% of the time would force human users to watch out for mistakes the tool may make in the 20% of the time, which means they need to look for mistakes in _all_ merges made by the tool, which is not something we would want. That is the takeaway.

Thanks.