On Mon, 2011-09-12 at 09:48 -0400, C. Michael Pilato wrote: > On 09/12/2011 09:24 AM, Paul Burba wrote: > >>> I'm currently looking at merging from a high-level POV, looking at what > >>> clues and information we give the users about what they're doing, that > >>> hopefully guide them in doing the Right Thing and don't mislead and > >>> distract them. > > > > Do we have reason to believe that users are being "mislead and > > distracted" by diff's current behavior? I'll admit there is plenty to > > be tripped up by with merge tracking, but I'm not sure that diff makes > > the top 10. > > I'm certainly not convinced. I've heard no user feedback to this effect, > and have been watching this thread with some amusement as it appears on the > surface to be an academic exercise aimed at solving a problem that doesn't > actually exist.
I take some offence at that. Sure it's a not a problem that's been proven to need solving -- and I agree it quite likely is low on the priority list in pragmatic terms. I DON'T ASK YOU TO FIX IT. But I'm interested more in the theory and the potential for even being able to describe mergeinfo changes in some way that makes sense to the user. I hardly care a jot whether this particular issue is "solved" if we can't improve other merge-related behaviour get a whole lot better as well. This is just something that cropped up and I'm trying to raise the level of discussion from "it's just that way because it was easy to implement, who really cares?" up to "right, this shows how we need a good canonical way of describing merges even to ourselves let alone to our users so let's acknowledge that a much higher level description would be useful and then mark it as low-priority for actually fixing". - Julian
