On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 04:15:38PM +0200, Andreas Krey wrote: > On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:51:40 +0000, Stein Somers wrote: > > > Now I realize merges are always asymmetric. > > Actually, merging is a symmetric operation. The tree (and copyfrom > info) resulting from a merge should be the same independent of in > which direction the merge is performed.
I agree that symmetry is a nice-to-have property of a merge algorithm. But I would be totally happy with asymmetric results, as long as either result is well-defined and repeatable. I don't see why the behaviour of a merge algorithm must be symmetric. > In svn the metadata just looks > completely different depending on the direction of the merge. (It also > is different due to the necessity of --reintegrate.) Sounds like you are conflating the UI with the underlying design. --reintegrate is a UI issue and has nothing to do with symmetry or correctness. See http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/subversion-dev/201107.mbox/%3c20110720124721.ga7...@ted.stsp.name%3E
