Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

> Peter Todd wrote:
> 
>>>> That said if anyone does take a look at that repository... To make
>>>> sense of it, you're best bet is to get the monotone-viz program, which
>>>> shows you how the different revisions relate graphically. It makes
>>>> pretty, if frighteningly complex, pictures too!
>>> 
>>> Do you have any links to documentation of how the monotone merge works
>>> differently from e.g. cvs merge?
>> 
>> I took a look around and couldn't find anything directly comparing the
>> two. The best practices stuff on the wiki are interesting though:
> 
> Thanks for looking this up. Interesting thoughts. I think the main
> difference to CVSNT is the "lighter weight" of branches. 

On more reading, the ability to create a branch on commit (as opposed to
creating it before editing) seems to be one thing that makes this easier to
use for the "happy branching" style of development you're talking about.
I'll have to try, but I think a script of some sort can do this with
CVS/CVSNT/SVN repos also. This would definitely be helpful in some
situations, especially when trying to use some of the techniques these docs
describe.

One thing I was wondering, and the docs I've read didn't touch this. Say
you have revisions A, B, and so on through G implementing several features.
Now you do some cherry picking and merge into a branch R the
revisions/features D and E. The branch R advances with other changes, and
at a later point you decide that you want more of these features. You
forget that you already merged D and E, and just merge B through G into R.
For all I know, on CVS/CVSNT/SVN, this would create merge conflicts on the
places where D and E were merged in but modified (which often is needed
when merging in), as the system has no way of knowing that the modification
means the same thing as the original and is just necessary to integrate the
original -- and they are also not smart enough to exclude the changesets D
and E from the merge (because they already have been merged before). 

How's that in monotone? Does it remember that D and E have been merged in
before and skips them when you tell it to merge B through G?

Thanks,
Gerhard

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