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From: Nick Barnes <Nick.Barnes@pobox.com>
To: Mike Porter <mupi@mknet.org>, stable@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: Message from Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au> 
	<20030923005837.GP91404@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au> 
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 09:21:35 +0100
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Subject: Re: About mergemaster (Re: upgrading) 
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At 2003-09-23 00:58:37+0000, Peter Jeremy writes:

> The difficulty here is determing the 'unchanged from default' case.
> MD5 checksums in an mtree database could give you a yes/no answer but
> isn't extensible - once you start talking about comparing your current
> file to the default, the next obvious request is the ability to do a
> 3-way merge.  IMHO, just detecting that a file has or hasn't changed
> from the then default is of very little benefit without the ability to
> do a 3-way merge of differences.

Indeed.  How hard would it be for mergemaster to keep a copy of the
release tree off to one side (in /var/)?  Then a subsequent
mergemaster could offer 3-way merge.

I keep changed config files in our corporate Perforce (SCM)
repository, so can already do three-way merges.

Nick Barnes