On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 4:28 AM Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 04:50:08PM -1000, Martin von Zweigbergk wrote: > > > > > I do this often enough to wonder if I should write a small "filter" > > > > that I can pipe a whole "diff3" <<< ... ||| ... === ... >>> region > > > > to and convert it into to diffs, but not often enough to motivate > > > > me to actually write one ;-). > > > > > > I would definitely have found that useful before (usually when one side > > > made a tiny one-line change and the other side deleted or drastically > > > changed a huge chunk). > > > > FYI, I added something similar to Mercurial recently. Instead of two > > diffs, it shows one snapshot and one diff. See > > https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D9551 for details. I've used it for a > > few weeks and it seems to be working pretty well. The drawback is > > mostly when you want to keep the side with the diff and ignore the > > other side, since you'll then have to drop the lines prefixed with "-" > > and then enter column-selection mode or something and delete the first > > character on each remaining line. > > I've used the script I posted earlier in the thread several times in the > last 6 months or so, by replacing the conflict markers in the file I'm > resolving with the new output (basically "%!magic-diff3" in vim). > > It is helpful. My biggest complaint is cleaning up the diff from the > marker after viewing it. In most cases where it's helpful, one side made > a large change (say, deleting or moving a big chunk of code) and the > other made a small one (tweaking one line in the moved chunk). The small > diff is useful, but the big one is not. And then after having viewed it, > I have to remove the whole big diff in my editor. > > (It sounds like yours _replaces_ the conflict marker with the diff, > which is why you have to edit the diff. Mine is showing it in addition, > so you have to delete the diff). Yes, that's correct. It replaces the base and one side of the conflict marker by a diff (and leaves the other side as a snapshot). > I think rather than thinking of these as expanded conflict markers, it > would probably be a more useful workflow to just look at the diff in a > separate command (so just show the conflicts, not everything else, and > just show the diff). I suspect it could be made pretty nice with some > simple editor support (e.g., open a new buffer in the editor showing the > diff for just the current hunk, or even the current _half_ of the hunk > you're on). At some point it seems better to delegate to a proper merge tool. You said that you use vim, so I'm a little surprised that you use conflict markers instead of using vimdiff. I don't use vim and I've never really used vimdiff. I still use conflict markers, mostly out of habit, but also because I usually run in a tmux session on a remote machine. I feel like I should try to switch to meld.
