annotate README @ 5210:90d9ec0dc69d

merge: forcefully mark files that we get from the second parent as dirty

After a hg merge, we want to include in the commit all the files that we
got from the second parent, so that we have the correct file-level
history.  To make them visible to hg commit, we try to mark them as dirty.

Unfortunately, right now we can't really mark them as dirty[1] - the
best we can do is to mark them as needing a full comparison of their
contents, but they will still be considered clean if they happen to be
identical to the version in the first parent.

This changeset extends the dirstate format in a compatible way, so that
we can mark a file as dirty:

Right now we use a negative file size to indicate we don't have valid
stat data for this entry.  In practice, this size is always -1.

This patch uses -2 to indicate that the entry is dirty.  Older versions
of hg won't choke on this dirstate, but they may happily mark the file
as clean after a full comparison, destroying all of our hard work.

The patch adds a dirstate.normallookup method with the semantics of the
current normaldirty, and changes normaldirty to forcefully mark the
entry as dirty.

This should fix issue522.

[1] - well, we could put them in state 'm', but that state has a
different meaning.

Basic install:

 $ make            # see install targets
 $ make install    # do a system-wide install
 $ hg debuginstall # sanity-check setup
 $ hg              # see help

See http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/ for detailed installation
instructions, platform-specific notes, and Mercurial user information.