git-merge-file --ours, --theirs

Sometimes people want their conflicting merges autoresolved by
favouring upstream changes.  The standard answer they are given is
to run "git diff --name-only | xargs git checkout MERGE_HEAD --" in
such a case.  This is to accept automerge results for the paths that
are fully resolved automatically, while taking their version of the
file in full for paths that have conflicts.

This is problematic on two counts.

One is that this is not exactly what these people want.  It discards
all changes they did on their branch for any paths that conflicted.
They usually want to salvage as much automerge result as possible in
a conflicted file, and want to take the upstream change only in the
conflicted part.

This patch teaches two new modes of operation to the lowest-lever
merge machinery, xdl_merge().  Instead of leaving the conflicted
lines from both sides enclosed in <<<, ===, and >>> markers, the
conflicts are resolved favouring our side or their side of changes.

A larger problem is that this tends to encourage a bad workflow by
allowing people to record such a mixed up half-merged result as a
full commit without auditing.  This commit does not tackle this
issue at all.  In git, we usually give long enough rope to users
with strange wishes as long as the risky features are not enabled by
default, and this is such a risky feature.

Signed-off-by: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/xdiff/xdiff.h b/xdiff/xdiff.h
index 4da052a..8a0efed 100644
--- a/xdiff/xdiff.h
+++ b/xdiff/xdiff.h
@@ -58,6 +58,12 @@ extern "C" {
 #define XDL_MERGE_ZEALOUS_ALNUM 3
 #define XDL_MERGE_LEVEL_MASK 0x0f
 
+/* merge favor modes */
+#define XDL_MERGE_FAVOR_OURS 1
+#define XDL_MERGE_FAVOR_THEIRS 2
+#define XDL_MERGE_FAVOR(flags) (((flags)>>4) & 3)
+#define XDL_MERGE_FLAGS(level, style, favor) ((level)|(style)|((favor)<<4))
+
 /* merge output styles */
 #define XDL_MERGE_DIFF3 0x8000
 #define XDL_MERGE_STYLE_MASK 0x8000
@@ -110,7 +116,7 @@ int xdl_diff(mmfile_t *mf1, mmfile_t *mf2, xpparam_t const *xpp,
 
 int xdl_merge(mmfile_t *orig, mmfile_t *mf1, const char *name1,
 		mmfile_t *mf2, const char *name2,
-		xpparam_t const *xpp, int level, mmbuffer_t *result);
+		xpparam_t const *xpp, int flags, mmbuffer_t *result);
 
 #ifdef __cplusplus
 }