CVS merge conflicts (Re: Completion system directories)

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 3, 12:35pm, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
}
} While we're on the subject of cvs can people be a little careful with
} the ChangeLog - I've fixed it a couple of times when the merge has gone
} wrong. For an example, do:
} cvs diff -r 1.183 -r 1.184 ChangeLog
} An update before a commit might make it less likely?

I always do update before I commit.  One *can't* commit without first
updating, in fact.  An update before editing the ChangeLog would help
if not for race conditions; in the case of r1.184 I'd already done an 
update, edited the file, and then attempted to commit, only to have it
fail because your commit had gone in in the meantime.  The 20 minutes
between r1.183 and r1.184 were me attempting (apparently unsuccessfully)
to fix the merge conflicts that resulted from my subsequent update.

The real problem is that the diff algorithm is very bad at handling
a series of short paragraphs separated by blank lines, because it
considers the overlap in the two versions to end at a matching line,
even if the matching lines are both empty.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com