Re: Switching to git?

[Pavel Roskin]

Quoting Robert Millan <address@hidden>:

> Maybe you find interesting to know that I never use RCS (any of them) merging
> feature at all.  I prefer to extract patches from RCS and manage them myself.
> I often even manage branches by hand as well.

Just to clear any misunderstanding, extracting a patch and applying to  
another file is still merging.  Unlike the 3-way merge, the patch  
command won't generate a merged file with conflicts that require  
manual editing.  But more trivial kinds of merging will happen is the  
patch command considers it safe.  Applying a patch cleanly doesn't  
guarantee that the resulting file will compile and/or work properly.

Some bugs caused by merging can be avoided like other bugs, i.e. by  
using sane programming and testing practices.  Some bugs just need to  
be tracked down.  That's just a fact of life.  For instance, some code  
could be duplicated in one branch and fixed in another, resulting in  
one copy being unfixed.  A patch could introduce a call to a function  
that changed its semantic after the base revision of the patch.  Both  
can be prevented, but only to a degree.

--
Regards,
Pavel Roskin