merge: minimize conflicts when common base is not shown (
issue4447)
Previously, two changes that were nearly, but not quite, identical would result
in large merge conflict regions that looked very similar, and were thus very
confusing to users, and lead people used to other source control systems to
claim that "mercurial's merge algorithms suck". In the relatively common case
of a new file being introduced in two branches with very slight modifications,
the old behavior would show the entire file as a conflict, and it would be very
difficult for a user to determine what was going on.
In the past, mercurial attempted to solve this with a "very smart" algorithm
that would find all common lines, but this has significant problems as
described in
2ea6d906cf9b.
Instead, we use a "very dumb" algorithm introduced in the previous patch that
simply matches lines at the periphery of conflict regions. This minimizes most
conflict regions well, though there may still be some degenerate edge cases,
like small modification to the beginning and end of a large file.
$ echo "[extensions]" >> $HGRCPATH
$ echo "mq=" >> $HGRCPATH
$ hg init a
$ cd a
$ echo a > a
$ hg ci -Ama
adding a
$ hg qnew a.patch
$ echo a >> a
$ hg qrefresh
$ hg qnew b.patch
$ echo b > b
$ hg add b
$ hg qrefresh
$ hg qnew c.patch
$ echo c > c
$ hg add c
$ hg qrefresh
$ hg qgoto a.patch
popping c.patch
popping b.patch
now at: a.patch
$ hg qgoto c.patch
applying b.patch
applying c.patch
now at: c.patch
$ hg qgoto b.patch
popping c.patch
now at: b.patch
Using index:
$ hg qgoto 0
popping b.patch
now at: a.patch
$ hg qgoto 2
applying b.patch
applying c.patch
now at: c.patch
No warnings when using index ... and update from non-qtip and with pending
changes in unrelated files:
$ hg qnew bug314159
$ echo d >> c
$ hg qrefresh
$ hg qnew bug141421
$ echo e >> b
$ hg qrefresh
$ hg up -r bug314159
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
$ echo f >> a
$ echo f >> b
$ echo f >> c
$ hg qgoto 1
abort: local changes found, qrefresh first
[255]
$ hg qgoto 1 -f
popping bug141421
popping bug314159
popping c.patch
now at: b.patch
$ hg st
M a
M b
? c.orig
$ hg up -qCr.
$ hg qgoto 3
applying c.patch
applying bug314159
now at: bug314159
Detect ambiguous non-index:
$ hg qgoto 14
patch name "14" is ambiguous:
bug314159
bug141421
abort: patch 14 not in series
[255]
$ cd ..