threads / discuss / 29187

How to automatically correct an almost correct auto-merge?

Subject: How to automatically correct an almost correct auto-merge?

## tl;dr

4 messages between Dec 16, 2011 and Dec 17, 2011.

replies: 3people: 3as markdown or json

SZEDER Gábor· Dec 16, 2011, 20:32 UTC · lore

Hi,

Briefly:

Neighboring areas of a file are modified in two branches. Git merges the two branches without conflicts, but the result is not semantically correct. How can I teach git to produce the correct merge result when performing the same merge later on?

Longer:

The following commands create a file and two branches, both of them modifying the file by adding lines in the same area:

git init cat >file <<\EOF 1

2 EOF git add file git commit -m file git apply <<\EOF

diff --git a/file b/file
index 1c3e7efc..121366a2 100644
--- a/file
+++ b/file
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
 1

+a
+
 2
EOF
git commit -a -m a
git checkout -b branch HEAD^
git apply <<\EOF
diff --git a/file b/file
index 1c3e7efc..f2e91d4f 100644
--- a/file
+++ b/file
@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
 1
+b
+
+c

 2
EOF
git commit -a -m 'b c'
git checkout master


At this point I merge 'branch' and git produces the following result:

$ git merge branch
Auto-merging file
Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy.
 file |    3 +++
 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
$ cat file
1
b

c

a

2


Now, these changes and the merge above are the minimal receipe which
corresponds to a real merge I'm having trouble with at dayjob.  Just
imagine that '1' and '2' are the beginning and end of a function, 'b'
is the declaration of a new local variable, and 'a' and 'c' are new
code blocks.  As it happens, the semantically correct result would be
the following:

1
b

a

c

2

i.e. 'a' must be executed before 'c'.

I corrected the merge result manually, but these two branches are
merged a couple of times a day into an integration branch, and they
will likely cook for a few weeks, which means a lot of merges, and a
lot of manual corrections.  So I'm looking for a way to teach git to
produce the semantically correct merge result.  Something like
'rerere' would be great, but of course I can't use 'rerere' in this
case, because there are no merge conflicts at all...

Any ideas?  Did someone deal with similar issues before?


Thanks,
Gábor

Seth Robertson· Dec 16, 2011, 20:39 UTC · re: SZEDER Gábor · lore

Re: How to automatically correct an almost correct auto-merge?

> How can I teach git to produce the correct merge result when
> performing the same merge later on?

Custom merge driver.

Type `man gitattributes` and search for "custom merge driver"

Your merge driver can have whatever policy you can program, on a per file basis.

					-Seth Robertson

SZEDER Gábor· Dec 17, 2011, 11:07 UTC · re: Seth Robertson · lore

Re: How to automatically correct an almost correct auto-merge?

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 03:39:27PM -0500, Seth Robertson wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> 
> > How can I teach git to produce the correct merge result when
> > performing the same merge later on?
> 
> Custom merge driver.
> 
> Type `man gitattributes` and search for "custom merge driver"
> 
> Your merge driver can have whatever policy you can program, on a per
> file basis.

Thanks for the pointer, I knew it must be possible with git somehow.

For future reference, here's what I did to handle the minimal receipe posted in my earlier email:

I stored the diff between the original and semantically almost correct merge result and the fixed version in the file "patch", then put together the little script below and configured it as custom merge driver for the file "file", as described in the documentation. The script uses 'git merge-file' to perform the real merge, and then applies the fixup patch (after rewriting the paths, because during the merge the patch should be applied to the current file the merge driver is working with instead of the original "file"). Of course, "file" might be modified by other merges before or after the problematic merge, but the fixup patch should not be applied in those cases. The two greps and the conditions make sure that the patch is applied only if both "code blocks" are in the file and they are in the wrong order.

Unfortunately, applying a patch is more sensitive to matching context, so it will fail easily when there are other changes in the neighborhood, but at least it will fail loudly, and then I'll know I have to fix it up manually. We'll see, how it will cope with real source code.

Thanks, Gábor

#!/bin/sh

f="file"

git merge-file "$1" "$2" "$3"

a_line="$(grep -n '^a$' "$1" |cut -d: -f1)" c_line="$(grep -n '^c$' "$1" |cut -d: -f1)"

if [ -n "$a_line" -a -n "$c_line" ] && [ "$c_line" -lt "$a_line" ]; then 
	echo "Fixing incorrect auto-merge result of '$f'"
	sed -e "s%^diff --git a/$f b/$f%diff --git a/$1 b/$1%" \
		-e "s%^--- a/$f%--- a/$1%" \
		-e "s%^+++ b/$f%+++ b/$1%" patch \
		|git apply
fi

Neal Kreitzinger· Dec 16, 2011, 21:32 UTC · re: SZEDER Gábor · lore

Re: How to automatically correct an almost correct auto-merge?

On 12/16/2011 2:32 PM, SZEDER Gábor wrote:

Show 70 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
>
> Briefly:
>
> Neighboring areas of a file are modified in two branches.  Git
> merges the two branches without conflicts, but the result is not
> semantically correct.  How can I teach git to produce the correct
> merge result when performing the same merge later on?
>
>
> Longer:
>
> The following commands create a file and two branches, both of them
> modifying the file by adding lines in the same area:
>
> git init cat>file<<\EOF 1
>
> 2 EOF git add file git commit -m file git apply<<\EOF diff --git
> a/file b/file index 1c3e7efc..121366a2 100644 --- a/file +++ b/file
> @@ -1,3 +1,5 @@ 1
>
> +a + 2 EOF git commit -a -m a git checkout -b branch HEAD^ git
> apply<<\EOF diff --git a/file b/file index 1c3e7efc..f2e91d4f 100644
> --- a/file +++ b/file @@ -1,3 +1,6 @@ 1 +b + +c
>
> 2 EOF git commit -a -m 'b c' git checkout master
>
>
> At this point I merge 'branch' and git produces the following
> result:
>
> $ git merge branch Auto-merging file Merge made by the 'recursive'
> strategy. file |    3 +++ 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 0
> deletions(-) $ cat file 1 b
>
> c
>
> a
>
> 2
>
>
> Now, these changes and the merge above are the minimal receipe which
> corresponds to a real merge I'm having trouble with at dayjob.  Just
> imagine that '1' and '2' are the beginning and end of a function,
> 'b' is the declaration of a new local variable, and 'a' and 'c' are
> new code blocks.  As it happens, the semantically correct result
> would be the following:
>
> 1 b
>
> a
>
> c
>
> 2
>
> i.e. 'a' must be executed before 'c'.
>
> I corrected the merge result manually, but these two branches are
> merged a couple of times a day into an integration branch, and they
> will likely cook for a few weeks, which means a lot of merges, and a
> lot of manual corrections.  So I'm looking for a way to teach git to
> produce the semantically correct merge result.  Something like
> 'rerere' would be great, but of course I can't use 'rerere' in this
> case, because there are no merge conflicts at all...
>
> Any ideas?  Did someone deal with similar issues before?
>

You can produce conflicts by implementing keyword expansion on "line 1" (or whatever the first commentable line is in your language) of your source changes during your pre-commit hook. We do a keyword expansion on "user" (whomai) and "date" (date) keywords. This will cause "line 1" to conflict on same file edits in a merge. As for trusting rerere, we don't. We do it manually with kdiff3 as the mergetool. If rerere works for you reliably in this scenario then I'd like to know about it.

v/r, neal