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, 2 deletions

diff --git a/xdiff/xmerge.c b/xdiff/xmerge.c
index 1cb65a9..b2ddc75 100644
--- a/xdiff/xmerge.c
+++ b/xdiff/xmerge.c
@@ -214,11 +214,15 @@ static int fill_conflict_hunk(xdfenv_t *xe1, const char *name1,
 
 static int xdl_fill_merge_buffer(xdfenv_t *xe1, const char *name1,
 				 xdfenv_t *xe2, const char *name2,
+				 int favor,
 				 xdmerge_t *m, char *dest, int style)
 {
 	int size, i;
 
 	for (size = i = 0; m; m = m->next) {
+		if (favor && !m->mode)
+			m->mode = favor;
+
 		if (m->mode == 0)
 			size = fill_conflict_hunk(xe1, name1, xe2, name2,
 						  size, i, style, m, dest);
@@ -391,6 +395,7 @@ static int xdl_do_merge(xdfenv_t *xe1, xdchange_t *xscr1, const char *name1,
 	int i0, i1, i2, chg0, chg1, chg2;
 	int level = flags & XDL_MERGE_LEVEL_MASK;
 	int style = flags & XDL_MERGE_STYLE_MASK;
+	int favor = XDL_MERGE_FAVOR(flags);
 
 	if (style == XDL_MERGE_DIFF3) {
 		/*
@@ -523,14 +528,14 @@ static int xdl_do_merge(xdfenv_t *xe1, xdchange_t *xscr1, const char *name1,
 	/* output */
 	if (result) {
 		int size = xdl_fill_merge_buffer(xe1, name1, xe2, name2,
-			changes, NULL, style);
+			favor, changes, NULL, style);
 		result->ptr = xdl_malloc(size);
 		if (!result->ptr) {
 			xdl_cleanup_merge(changes);
 			return -1;
 		}
 		result->size = size;
-		xdl_fill_merge_buffer(xe1, name1, xe2, name2, changes,
+		xdl_fill_merge_buffer(xe1, name1, xe2, name2, favor, changes,
 				      result->ptr, style);
 	}
 	return xdl_cleanup_merge(changes);