Import the latest 32-bit implementation of count_masked_bytes() from
Linux (arch/x86/include/asm/word-at-a-time.h). It's shorter and avoids
overflows and negative numbers.
This fixes test failures on 32-bit, where negative partial results had
been shifted right using the "wrong" method (logical shift right instead
of arithmetic short right). The compiler is free to chose the method,
so it was only wrong in the sense that it didn't work as intended by us.
Reported-by: Øyvind A. Holm <sunny@sunbase.org>
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Hide literals that can cause compiler warnings for 32-bit architectures in
expressions that evaluate to small numbers there. Some compilers warn that
0x0001020304050608 won't fit into a 32-bit long, others that shifting right
by 56 bits clears a 32-bit value completely.
The correct values are calculated in the 64-bit case, which is all that matters
in this if-branch.
Reported-by: Øyvind A. Holm <sunny@sunbase.org>
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Acked-by: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Import macro REPEAT_BYTE from Linux (arch/x86/include/asm/word-at-a-time.h)
to avoid 64-bit integer literals, which cause some 32-bit compilers to
print warnings.
Reported-by: Øyvind A. Holm <sunny@sunbase.org>
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The functions xdl_cha_first(), xdl_cha_next() and xdl_atol() are not used
by us. While removing them increases the difference to the upstream
version of libxdiff, it only adds a bit to the more than 600 differing
lines in xutils.c (mmfile_t management was simplified significantly when
the library was imported initially). Besides, if upstream modifies these
functions in the future, we won't need to think about importing those
changes, so in that sense it makes tracking modifications easier.
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Add a way to register a callback function that is gets passed the
start line and line count of each hunk of a diff. Only standard
types are used.
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Darwin does not define __WORDSIZE, and compiles the 32-bit code path
on 64-bit systems, resulting in a totally broken git.
I could not find an alternative -- other than the platform symbols
(__x86_64__ etc.) -- that does the test in the preprocessor. However,
we can also just test for the size of a 'long', which is what really
matters here. Any compiler worth its salt will leave only the branch
relevant for its platform, and indeed on Linux/GCC the numbers don't
change:
Test tr/darwin-xdl-fast-hash origin/next origin/master
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4000.1: log -3000 (baseline) 0.09(0.07+0.01) 0.09(0.07+0.01) -5.5%* 0.09(0.07+0.01) -4.1%
4000.2: log --raw -3000 (tree-only) 0.47(0.41+0.05) 0.47(0.40+0.05) -0.5% 0.45(0.38+0.06) -3.5%.
4000.3: log -p -3000 (Myers) 1.81(1.67+0.12) 1.81(1.67+0.13) +0.3% 1.99(1.84+0.12) +10.2%***
4000.4: log -p -3000 --histogram 1.79(1.66+0.11) 1.80(1.67+0.11) +0.4% 1.96(1.82+0.10) +9.2%***
4000.5: log -p -3000 --patience 2.17(2.02+0.13) 2.20(2.04+0.13) +1.3%. 2.33(2.18+0.13) +7.4%***
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Significance hints: '.' 0.1 '*' 0.05 '**' 0.01 '***' 0.001
Noticed-by: Brian Gernhardt <brian@gernhardtsoftware.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Redo the hashing loop in xdl_hash_record in a way that loads an entire
'long' at a time, using masking tricks to see when and where we found
the terminating '\n'.
I stole inspiration and code from the posts by Linus Torvalds around
https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/2/452https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/5/6
His method reads the buffers in sizeof(long) increments, and may thus
overrun it by at most sizeof(long)-1 bytes before it sees the final
newline (or hits the buffer length check). I considered padding out
all buffers by a suitable amount to "catch" the overrun, but
* this does not work for mmap()'d buffers: if you map 4096+8 bytes
from a 4096 byte file, accessing the last 8 bytes results in a
SIGBUS on my machine; and
* it would also be extremely ugly because it intrudes deep into the
unpacking machinery.
So I adapted it to not read beyond the buffer at all. Instead, it
reads the final partial word byte-by-byte and strings it together.
Then it can use the same logic as before to finish the hashing.
So far we enable this only on x86_64, where it provides nice speedup
for diff-related work:
Test origin/next tr/xdiff-fast-hash
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4000.1: log -3000 (baseline) 0.07(0.05+0.02) 0.08(0.06+0.02) +14.3%
4000.2: log --raw -3000 (tree-only) 0.37(0.33+0.04) 0.37(0.32+0.04) +0.0%
4000.3: log -p -3000 (Myers) 1.75(1.65+0.09) 1.60(1.49+0.10) -8.6%
4000.4: log -p -3000 --histogram 1.73(1.62+0.09) 1.58(1.49+0.08) -8.7%
4000.5: log -p -3000 --patience 2.11(2.00+0.10) 1.94(1.80+0.11) -8.1%
Perhaps other platforms could also benefit. However it does NOT work
on big-endian systems!
[jc: minimum style and compilation fixes]
Signed-off-by: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Because the default Myers, patience and histogram algorithms cannot be in
effect at the same time, XDL_PATIENCE_DIFF and XDL_HISTOGRAM_DIFF are not
independent bits. Instead of wasting one bit per algorithm, define a few
macros to access the few bits they occupy and update the code that access
them.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Normally it doesn't matter if we show the pre-image or th post-image
for the common parts of a diff because they are the same. If
white-space changes are ignored they can differ, though. The
new text after applying the diff is more interesting in that case,
so show that instead of the old contents.
Note: GNU diff shows the pre-image.
Suggested-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Add the option -W/--function-context to git diff. It is similar to
the same option of git grep and expands the context of change hunks
so that the whole surrounding function is shown. This "natural"
context can allow changes to be understood better.
Note: GNU patch doesn't like diffs generated with the new option;
it seems to expect context lines to be the same before and after
changes. git apply doesn't complain.
This implementation has the same shortcoming as the one in grep,
namely that there is no way to explicitly find the end of a
function. That means that a few lines of extra context are shown,
right up to the next recognized function begins. It's already
useful in its current form, though.
The function get_func_line() in xdiff/xemit.c is extended to work
forward as well as backward to find post-context as well as
pre-context. It returns the position of the first found matching
line. The func_line parameter is made optional, as we don't need
it for -W.
The enhanced function is then used in xdl_emit_diff() to extend
the context as needed. If the added context overlaps with the
next change, it is merged into the current hunk.
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Move the code to search for a function line to be shown in the hunk
header into its own function and to make returning the length-limited
result string easier, introduce struct func_line.
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
27af01d (xdiff/xprepare: improve O(n*m) performance in
xdl_cleanup_records(), 2011-08-17) was supposed to be a performance
boost only. However, it unexpectedly changed the behaviour of diff.
Revert a part of 27af01d that removes logic that mark lines as
"multi-match" (ie. dis[i] == 2). This was preventing the multi-match
discard heuristic (performed in xdl_cleanup_records() and
xdl_clean_mmatch()) from executing.
Reported-by: Alexander Pepper <pepper@inf.fu-berlin.de>
Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Ensure that the xdl_free_classifier() call on xdlclassifier_t cf is safe
even if xdl_init_classifier() isn't called. This may occur in the case
where diff is run with --histogram and a call to, say, xdl_prepare_ctx()
fails.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In xdl_cleanup_records(), we see O(n*m) performance, where n is the
number of records from xdf->dstart to xdf->dend, and m is the size of a
bucket in xdf->rhash (<= by mlim).
Here, we improve this to O(n) by pre-computing nm (in rcrec->len(1|2))
in xdl_classify_record().
Reported-by: Marat Radchenko <marat@slonopotamus.org>
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Having an additional variable (ptr) instead of changing line(1|2) and
count(1|2) was for debugging purposes.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Do away with reduce_common_start_end() and use xdf->dstart and xdf->dend
set by xdl_trim_ends() that similarly tells us where the first unmatched
line from the start and end occurs.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Previously we were over-complicating matters by trying to combine the
recursed results. Now, terminate immediately if a recursive call failed
and return its result.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Given our simple mmfile structure, xdl_mmfile_next() calls are
redundant. Do away with calls to them.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
For histogram diff, we can afford a smaller sample size and thus a
poorer estimate of the number of lines, as the hash table (rhash) won't
be filled up/grown. This is safe as the final count of lines (xdf.nrecs)
will be updated correctly anyway by xdl_prepare_ctx().
This gives us a small boost in performance.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
xdiff performs "classification" of records (xdl_classify_record()),
replacing hashes (xrecord_t.ha) with a unique identifier of the
record/line and building a hash table (xrecord_t.rhash) of records. This
is then used to "cleanup" records (xdl_cleanup_records()).
We don't need any of that in histogram diff, so we omit calls to these
functions. We also skip allocating memory to the hash table, rhash, as
it is no longer used.
This gives us a small boost in performance.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Port JGit's HistogramDiff algorithm over to C. Rough numbers (TODO) show
that it is faster than its --patience cousin, as well as the default
Meyers algorithm.
The implementation has been reworked to use structs and pointers,
instead of bitmasks, thus doing away with JGit's 2^28 line limit.
We also use xdiff's default hash table implementation (xdl_hash_bits()
with XDL_HASHLONG()) for convenience.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This is in preparation for the histogram diff algorithm, which will also
re-use much of the code to call the default Meyers diff algorithm.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Group free()'s that are called when a malloc() fails in
xdl_prepare_ctx(), making for more readable code.
Also add a free() on ha, in case future git hackers add allocs after the
ha malloc.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Use memset() instead of a for loop to initialize. This could give a
performance advantage.
Signed-off-by: Tay Ray Chuan <rctay89@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The ctype functions isspace(), isalnum(), et al take an integer
argument representing an unsigned character, or -1 for EOF. On
platforms with a signed char, it is unsafe to pass a char to them
without casting it to unsigned char first.
Most of git is already shielded against this by the ctype
implementation in git-compat-util.h, but xdiff, which uses libc
ctype.h, ought to be fixed.
Noticed-by: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents-Montreal.ORG>
Reported-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
For each hunk, xdl_find_func searches the preimage for a function name
until the beginning of the file. If the file does not contain any
function names, this search has complexity O(n^2) in the number of
hunks n.
Instead, inline xdl_find_func() and keep track of up to which line we
have scanned already and the contents of the last funcname line that
we have found.
Noticed and a different approach proposed by Clemens Buchacher.
This alternative solution was done by René Scharfe.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In xdl_recmatch, do the memcmp to check if the two lines are equal before
checking if whitespace flags are set. If the lines are identical, then
there is no need to check if they differ only in whitespace.
This makes the common case (there is no whitespace difference) faster.
It costs the case where lines are the same length and contain
whitespace differences, but the common case is more than 20% faster.
Signed-off-by: Dylan Reid <dgreid@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
memset() is heavily optimized, and resulting assembler code
is about 150 lines less for that file.
Signed-off-by: Alexey Mahotkin <squadette@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The labels for the three participants in a potential conflict are all
optional arguments for the xdiff merge routine; if they are NULL, then
xdl_merge() can cope by omitting the labels from its output. Move
them to the xmparam structure to allow new callers to save some
keystrokes where they are not needed.
This also has the virtue of making the xdiff merge interface more
similar to merge_trees, which might make it easier to learn.
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The ‘git checkout --conflict=diff3’ command can be used to
present conflicts hunks including text from the common ancestor:
<<<<<<< ours
ourside
|||||||
original
=======
theirside
>>>>>>> theirs
The added information is helpful for resolving merges by hand, and
merge tools can usually grok it because it is very similar to the
output from diff3 -m.
A subtle change can help more tools to understand the output. ‘diff3’
includes the name of the merge base on the ||||||| line of the output,
and some tools misparse the conflict hunks without it. Add a new
xmp->ancestor parameter to xdl_merge() for use with conflict style
XDL_MERGE_DIFF3 as a label on the ||||||| line for any conflict hunks.
If xmp->ancestor is NULL, the output format is unchanged. Thus, this
change only provides unexposed plumbing for the new feature; it does
not affect the outward behavior of git.
Requested-by: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Bert Wesarg <Bert.Wesarg@googlemail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Include the merge level, favor, and style flags into the xmparam_t struct.
This removes the bit twiddling with these three values into the one flags
parameter.
Signed-off-by: Bert Wesarg <bert.wesarg@googlemail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The current union merge driver is implemented as an post process. But the
xdl_merge code is quite capable to produce the result by itself. Therefore
move it there.
Signed-off-by: Bert Wesarg <bert.wesarg@googlemail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This allows the callers of xdl_merge() to pass marker_size (defaults to 7)
in xmparam_t argument, to use conflict markers of non-default length.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
So far we have only needed to be able to pass an option that is generic to
xdiff family of functions to this function. Extend the interface so that
we can give it merge specific parameters.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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>
Thell Fowler noticed that various "ignore whitespace" options to git diff
do not work well on an incomplete line.
The loop control of the function responsible for these bugs was extremely
difficult to follow. This patch restructures the loops for three variants
of "ignore whitespace" logic.
The basic idea of the re-written logic is:
- A loop runs while the characters from both strings we are looking at
match. We declare unmatch immediately when we find something that does
not match and return false from the function. We break out of the loop
if we ran out of either side of the string.
The way we skip spaces inside this loop varies depending on the style
of ignoring whitespaces.
- After the above loop breaks, we know that the parts of the strings we
inspected so far match, ignoring the whitespaces. The lines can match
only if the remainder consists of nothing but whitespaces. This part
of the logic is shared across all three styles.
The new code is more obvious and should be much easier to follow.
Tested-by: Thell Fowler <git@tbfowler.name>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Upon seeing a whitespace, xdl_hash_record_with_whitespace() first skipped
the run of whitespaces (excluding LF) that begins there, ensuring that the
pointer points at the last whitespace character in the run, and assumed
that the next character must be LF at the end of the line. This does not
work when hashing an incomplete line, which lacks the LF at the end.
Introduce "at_eol" variable that is true when either we are at the end of
line (looking at LF) or at the end of an incomplete line, and use that
instead throughout the code.
Noticed by Thell Fowler.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
xdl_merge used to have a check to ensure that there was at least
some change in one or other side being merged but this suppressed
output for the degenerate case when base, local and remote
contents were all identical.
Removing this check enables correct output in the degenerate case
and xdl_free_script handles freeing NULL scripts so there is no
need to have the check for these calls.
Signed-off-by: Charles Bailey <charles@hashpling.org>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
http-push.c::finish_request():
request is initialized by the for loop
index-pack.c::free_base_data():
b is initialized by the for loop
merge-recursive.c::process_renames():
move compare to narrower scope, and remove unused assignments to it
remove unused variable renames2
xdiff/xdiffi.c::xdl_recs_cmp():
remove unused variable ec
xdiff/xemit.c::xdl_emit_diff():
xche is always overwritten
Signed-off-by: Benjamin Kramer <benny.kra@googlemail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The code used to misbehave when options to ignore certain whitespaces
(-w -b and --ignore-at-eol) were combined.
Signed-off-by: Keith Cascio <keith@cs.ucla.edu>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The patience diff algorithm produces slightly more intuitive output
than the classic Myers algorithm, as it does not try to minimize the
number of +/- lines first, but tries to preserve the lines that are
unique.
To this end, it first determines lines that are unique in both files,
then the maximal sequence which preserves the order (relative to both
files) is extracted.
Starting from this initial set of common lines, the rest of the lines
is handled recursively, with Myers' algorithm as a fallback when
the patience algorithm fails (due to no common unique lines).
This patch includes memory leak fixes by Pierre Habouzit.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Merge two hunks if there is only the specified number of otherwise unshown
context between them. For --inter-hunk-context=1, the resulting patch has
the same number of lines but shows uninterrupted context instead of a
context header line in between.
Patches generated with this option are easier to read but are also more
likely to conflict if the file to be patched contains other changes.
This patch keeps the default for this option at 0. It is intended to just
make the feature available in order to see its advantages and downsides.
Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In a corner case of large files whose lines do not match uniquely, the
loop to eliminate a line that matches multiple locations adjacent to a run
of lines that do not uniquely match wasted too much cycles. Fix this by
giving up early after scanning 100 lines in both direction.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In a corner case of large files whose lines do not match uniquely, the
loop to eliminate a line that matches multiple locations adjacent to a run
of lines that do not uniquely match wasted too much cycles. Fix this by
giving up early after scanning 100 lines in both direction.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
For some users (e.g. git blame), getting textual patch output is just
extra work, as they can get all the information they need from the low-
level diff structures. Allow for an alternate low-level emit function
to be defined to allow bypassing the textual patch generation; set
xemitconf_t's emit_func member to enable this.
The (void (*)()) type is pretty ugly, but the alternative would be to
include most of the private xdiff headers in xdiff.h to get the types
required for the "proper" function prototype. Also, a (void *) won't
work, as ANSI C doesn't allow a function pointer to be cast to an
object pointer.
Signed-off-by: Brian Downing <bdowning@lavos.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
When showing a conflicting merge result, and "--diff3 -m" style is asked
for, this patch makes sure that the merge reduction level does not exceed
XDL_MERGE_EAGER. This is because "diff3 -m" style output would not make
sense for anything more aggressive than XDL_MERGE_EAGER, because of the
way how the merge reduction works.
"git merge-file" no longer has to force MERGE_EAGER when "--diff3" is
asked for because of this change.
Suppose a common ancestor (shared preimage) is modified to postimage #1
and #2 (each letter represents one line):
#####
postimage#1: 1234ABCDE789
| /
| /
preimage: 123456789
| \
postimage#2: 1234AXYE789
####
XDL_MERGE_MINIMAL and XDL_MERGE_EAGER would:
(1) find the s/56/ABCDE/ done on one side and s/56/AXYE/ done on the
other side,
(2) notice that they touch an overlapping area, and
(3) mark it as a conflict, "ABCDE vs AXYE".
The difference between the two algorithms is that EAGER drops the hunk
altogether if the postimages match (i.e. both sides modified the same
way), while MINIMAL keeps it. There is no other operation performed to
the hunk. As the result, lines marked with "#" in the above picure will
be in the RCS merge style output like this (letters <, = and > represent
conflict marker lines):
output: 1234<ABCDE=AXYE>789 ; with MINIMAL/EAGER
The part from the preimage that corresponds to these conflicting changes
is "56", which is what "diff3 -m" style output adds to it:
output: 1234<ABCDE|56=AXYE>789 ; in "diff3 -m" style
Now, XDL_MERGE_ZEALOUS looks at the differences between the changes two
postimages made in order to reduce the number of lines in the conflicting
regions. It notices that both sides start their new contents with "A",
and excludes it from the output (it also excludes "E" for the same
reason). The conflict that used to be "ABCDE vs AXYE" is now "BCD vs XY":
output: 1234A<BCD=XY>E789 ; with ZEALOUS
There could even be matching parts between two postimages in the middle.
Instead of one side rewriting the shared "56" to "ABCDE" and the other
side to "AXYE", imagine the case where the postimages are "ABCDE" and
"AXCYE", in which case instead of having one conflicted hunk "BCD vs XY",
you would have two conflicting hunks "B vs X" and "D vs Y".
In either case, once you reduce "ABCDE vs AXYE" to "BCD vs XY" (or "ABCDE
vs AXCYE" to "B vs X" and "D vs Y"), there is no part from the preimage
that corresponds to the conflicting change made in both postimages
anymore. In other words, conflict reduced by ZEALOUS algorithm cannot be
expressed in "diff3 -m" style. Representing the last illustration like
this is misleading to say the least:
output: 1234A<BCD|56=XY>E789 ; broken "diff3 -m" style
because the preimage was not ...4A56E... to begin with. "A" and "E" are
common only between the postimages.
Even worse, once a single conflicting hunk is split into multiple ones
(recall the example of breaking "ABCDE vs AXCYE" to "B vs X" and "D vs
Y"), there is no sane way to distribute the preimage text across split
conflicting hunks.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>