vimdiff as a merge tool - merge

vimdiff helps in showing the diff of two files graphically and allows us to pick the changes from left to right/right to left.
The files I am dealing with are huge files and most of the differences vimdiff reports can be auto-merged except a few.As it takes lot of time to go diff by diff in vimdiff and take the action.
I would like to know if there is an option available in vimdiff that automerges the differences in left and right files as long as there is no ambiguity and leaving the conflicted resolutions similar to the tools svn merge and cvs merge tools does?

Its not possible to auto-merge the changes in two files unless we have a base copy where these two files branched and changes done separately. If an item is on one side and not on the other,it can't judge whether this item was newly added or an existing item was deleted. As there is a base copy exists while merging files in a repository, cvs merge,svn merge can auto-merge the changes.

If you use no version control, you can try diff and patch this way:
Before changing your file (say, file.txt), make a backup of the original version (file.orig).
When changed are made, make a patch-file: diff file.orig file.txt >patch.txt
Get a file which you want to merge changes to (say, file2.txt).
Use patch: patch file2.txt patch.txt
Changes will be merged, conflicted rows will be placed in a separate file.

Looks like vimdiff does not allow that. Man page says
"vimdiff - edit two or three versions of a file with Vim and show differences"
But you can have a look at Kdiff3 which lets you compare and merge.

Related

Mercurial merge results in files labelled modified but which are binary equal

I'm in the process of doing a merge, and I'm ready to commit at this point but my commit dialog in TortoiseHg is showing many files as modified but when I diff to parents it says all files are binary equal.
I do not have and have never had the eol extension enabled.
Revert changes nothing, the file is still registering as modified.
hg parents shows two parents for the file.
hg stat shows the file as modified, e.g.
c:\Projects\MyProject>hg stat Authorization\AuthorityGroups.cs
M Authorization\AuthorityGroups.cs
hg diff --git shows nothing, e.g.
c:\Projects\MyProject>hg diff --git Authorization\AuthorityGroups.cs
c:\Projects\MyProject>
I've tried this on two different machines on two separate clones and I'm seeing the same thing.
Any other thoughts for how I could diagnose or fix this?
Clearly something has changed but if it's not showing in hg diff --git how can I establish what that might be?
Update 2014/12/10:
I've done a bit more checking on the history of the two parent revisions and I think I see why it's getting confused.
We've got the original parent file added in revision 1 on default.
On the Apple branch the file has been renamed to move it to a new location.
On the Orange branch the file has been added to move it to the same new location.
So the file on both branches is binary identical and at the same location, but presumably Mercurial is flagging it as a difference to be merged because they arrived there by apparently different means.
So the question then becomes:
Is there any way to retrospectively repair the move being treated as an add and delete on a long committed changeset (a new commit would be fine, but I can't edit the history) , or do I just need to let it go through in the merge?
Is there any way to retrospectively repair the move being treated as an add and delete on a long committed changeset (a new commit would be fine, but I can't edit the history)
Well... sort of. Update to the most recent Orange commit in which the files had their old names (you can use hg bisect to find it if you're not sure exactly when it happened), do hg rename to the new names, commit, and then merge this into the current Orange head. Mercurial should be smart enough to register the files as properly renamed, and it won't cause conflicts (we know this because the more complex Apple/Orange merge didn't).
or do I just need to let it go through in the merge?
This is easier. Mercurial's merging algorithm is quite smart. It can deal with situations like this just fine.
Unless you have a third branch in which the files were never moved, the second option is unlikely to cause a problem. If you do have such a branch, you should be fine as long as you merge it into a descendant of the Apple rename (or merge from such a descendant). The major difficulty would be with merges to or from the Orange branch.

I was working in the wrong repo. They are almost the same but not associated data. How do i diff/merge?

Can you diff with the reverted copy?
I was doing work in the wrong repo. They are almost the same, but have no actual relation.
I just did a pull and an update, can i then copy my changed files into the Right head and then run a diff on it or something similar and then properly merge the 2 together?
I feel an alternate option would be do something like
copy the code over and commit it, then revert back, and merge with the commit to diff what has all changed..
I have changing something like 1500 lines over 9 files, so i dont want to rewrite a bunch of code segments.
How should i handle this?
It really depends on how similar the "almost the same, but have no actual relation" repositories are.
If they extremely similar (as in files have the same names and text is almost identical), you might get by with exporting a patch at the source repo and then importing the same patch into the target repo.
In the source repo:
hg export -r tip > path\to\oops.patch
and in the target repo:
hg import path\to\oops.patch --no-commit
I used --no-commit since I assume you will need to do some cleanup first to make sure that everything looks ok.
Alternatively, you could just compare the two directories using kdiff or BeyondCompare3 and bring over the differences that you want from the source repo to the target repo and commit it that way. This would probably be my approach.
(I am intentionally ignoring the question about why you have two repositories that are that similar but don't have a shared history. For all I know, it might be the right thing to do.)

With TortoiseHg, how do I exclude a file from checkins/pushs, but still get updates to it? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
how to ignore files in kiln/mercurial using tortoise hg “that are part of the repository”
I have a config file that I don’t wish to check in however I do wish to get updates whenever someone checks in a change to it.
In most systems I just need to uncheck the tick mark next to the config file at check-in time, however HG seems to make life a lot harder!
In parforce this even easier, I can just check the config file out in a different change list, how do I do the same in TortoiseHg?
In general, you don't. The usual way to handle this is not to put the config file in source control, but instead to put a template for it in source control. Something like config.sample. You can even tweak your run/build script to copy config.sample to config if config doesn't already exist.
There are plenty of other ways to try and get at this using mq or an alias like mycommit = commit -X config, but at its core a file is either tracked or it isn't and a file everyone has to change themselves shouldn't be.
If you uncheck the file from the file list before committing it won't go into the change set. This means it won't feature in a push (as these are per change set).
This is one feature of Tortoise that makes it useful over the command-line.
If you do a pull with an edited file, you will create multiple heads. You can merge these if you want the file to feature changes, but this might be a manual step.
Alternatively in the case of a config file it is useful to use the Patch Queue functionality of Mercurial. From the command-line this is possible thus (assuming it is changed in your working directory):
hg qnew "localConfig"
hg qrefresh
This creates a new patch queue item called "localConfigs", and puts the edited files (your config file) into the item. You can then:
hg qpop
To remove it from the patch queue (out of your change set path). Or:
hg qpush
To put it in your change set path. This is an easier way of managing file changes that you do regularly on top of keeping pace with the central repository: you pop your queue items out, pull and update, then push the queue items back on (handling any merge conflicts, though these are rare if your items are small). This way you avoid multiple heads.
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/MqExtension
We tend to use this mechanism in our office.
Note, pushing and popping acts like a stack collection; if "localConfigs" is on top of "moreLocalChanges" you will need both if you wish to push "localConfigs". My example assumes that the "localConfigs" patch is the only one in the queue. It is also disabled by default in Mercurial configuration, but comes bundled with it so you can enable it simply:
[extensions]
mq =

Mercurial/Kiln how can I get a deleted file without affecting my other files?

I have a file that was deleted a few changesets ago. As you can imagine, the other files in my project have changed since then. How can I get back that file (it's actually 2 files) without reverting all the other source files?
Use hg revert for just that file:
hg revert -r REV path/to/deleted/file
From the help for hg revert
If a file has been deleted, it is restored. If the executable mode of a file was changed, it is reset.
If names are given, all files matching the names are reverted. If no arguments are given, no files are reverted.
Another approach to this is to use the Kiln website. You can search for a changeset by changeset id, or just use a date search, .e.g. date:2011-10-01..2011-10-31
That will then give you a list of changesets, click the one that will show the version of the code you want to recover, and then if you click the Browse files at [changeset id] link on the right hand side you will then get a list of the folders and files at that point in time.
You can then just add new files to your project and cut and paste the code back into those new files.
Admittedly this isn't as nice an approach for recovering a whole file, but it's handy if you only want to recover part of the code, or if someone has subsequently added a new file with the name of the old file.

Same file in multiple changelists in perforce

Is there any way to have the same file be a part of multiples changelists in perforce? With that I mean that from the set of changed lines in the file one subset will belong to a changelist, while the other subset will belong to a second changelist.
Bonus question: If perforce does not support this, then which Source Control Systems, if any, do?
To answer the bonus question: GIT allows for per-line changelists.
For a comparison between the two view this question: GIT vs. Perforce- Two VCS will enter... one will leave.
The same copy of the file? No, unfortunately this isn't possible.
Another way to do this without branching is create additional workspaces (clients). Unless you really know what you're doing, be sure to set a different root directory in each of your workspaces. To save time (and disk), don't bother syncing the whole depot in the new workspace.
Sometimes, I'll have two copies of a depot (using two workspaces); one which contains work-in-progress and one which I keep unmodified. If I need to make a quickie change on a file that's heavily modified in my WIP workspace, I can use the 'virgin' workspace to make the change and submit it.
If you are using p4 server 2009.2, there is a workaround to do it. You can shelve a particular file and the diff is stored on the server. After shelving you may want to revert the file to its original version and then work it on in another change-list.
I know this is not a way you wanted it but it is quite easy to create another workspace/client and then sync the code. The later exercise becomes more tedious when you have volumes of code that goes into another application.
For more info read:
http://blog.perforce.com/blog/?p=1872
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/cmdref/shelve.html
You could make a copy of the file with all of the changes, revert, edit the file copy one set of changes into the file, submit, edit, copy the next set of changes, submit, edit, etc...
Bonus answer: I found this feature in Rational Team Concert (http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/rtc/). You can have the same file in many changesets. If you want to add File1 to Changeset1 and Changeset2, you must complete Changeset1 first. This allows you to add File 2 to Changeset2 but then a dependency between changesets is created, so you can not deliver Changeset2 without delivering Changeset1 too. Moreover you can not make changes to a complete changeset.