hg resolve

[Matt Mackall]

On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 10:07 +0100, Peter Arrenbrecht wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2008-12-12 at 15:31 -0800, Peter Loron wrote:
> >> On Dec 10, 2008, at 4:36 PM, TK Soh wrote:
> >>
> >> > On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Peter Arrenbrecht
> >> > <peter.arrenbrecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Leslie P. Polzer
> >> >> <sky at viridian-project.de> wrote:
> >> >>> Second issue, related: resolve without any arguments will
> >> >>> just overwrite a fixed conflict, discarding any changes
> >> >>> made.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> It should warn/ask the user interactively whether they
> >> >>> really want to do that. Alternative: no default behaviour
> >> >>> at all and a new switch that will restore the original
> >> >>> conflicts.
> >> >>
> >> >> +1. This has bitten me more than once, too. But maybe it's too late
> >> >> for removing the default (backward compat rules).
> >> >
> >> > If the rules have to be broken, it's better to do it while 1.1 is
> >> > still 'warm'.
> >>
> >> +2  This would be a very good change.
> >
> > Sorry, you only get one vote.
> >
> > We plan to add a new -a switch analogous to revert's.
> 
> But no change to the default behaviour, meaning `hg resolve the/file`
> will clobber any manual resolving I've already done when I meant to
> say `hg resolve -m the/file`?

Yes. 'resolve' is a English verb. If you 'resolve a problem', you're not
'marking a problem as solved', you are 'taking steps to solve a
problem'.

Which is why the svn command is in the past tense: 'I've already fixed
it'. As far as I know, svn doesn't have a built-in concept of helping
you fix it by launching a tool with all the appropriate versions.

The current default behavior is precisely the one people have asked for:
"I did a merge wrong and something broke and I want to try it again".
Fewer people asked for "show me a list of files that still need
merging" (resolve -l). And I'm pretty sure no one ever said "hey, can we
have svn's resolved command?" I didn't even know it existed until
recently and if I had, I would have chosen a different name.

Further, if you're doing:

hg merge
emacs foo.c  # sort out conflict markers or otherwise manually merge
hg resolve -m foo.c

..you're making more work for yourself. You're supposed to be doing:

hg merge
hg resolve foo.c  # use a merge tool

The slow path exists and is allowed, of course, but I'm not going to
make the common fast path harder to make the slow path easier.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.