Bert Freudenberg wrote:
Am 29.01.2006 um 08:41 schrieb Avi Bryant:
What do you find weak about the merge and diff tools in Monticello?
The automatic merging works very nicely for us. I even find myself formatting methods so they produce a nice diff ;-) Like, we have a method that lists the versions of packages used to build an image. It's laid-out as one line per package, so in the diff each changed package stands out visually :)
However, *if* there are conflicts, tool support is lacking. Apart from the wording in the merge-browser's interface, which I got used to, I'd like to properly resolve conflicts right there while merging. Currently it's either-or: you have to keep your method or replace it with the incoming method.
As a work-around, I usually accept all the incoming methods, but open a method browser on each of them. After the merge I go to each one to properly adjust the code manually, using the changes-based diff to see what happened.
It'd be very nice to be able to edit the new method right there in the merge browser. Visually, a three-pane layout showing the old, the new, and the merged hand-edited version would be very nice. But only being able to edit the code in a single pane would be an improvement, too.
Fortunately, it happens not very often we actually have conflicts, and even then, the majority can be resolved by using either the old or the new version. But I guess the remaining cases are what people mean when they ask for a better 3-way merge.
- Bert -
That's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about in terms of merging - you put it very clearly, Bert. It may be that I don't understand the merge tools availble in Squeak properly, but when compared to those in Eclipse, Araxis Merge, whatever, they seem quite poor and under-featured, which is not the case judging from other comments here.
S
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