git merge drivers (was: Half-baked unused features.)

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* David Kastrup wrote on Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 04:16:49AM CEST:
> The problem, as pointed out already, is that the commit affects the bulk
> of the indentation in the respective functions, while changing only few
> lines of substance.
> 
> And that means that it conflicts with any other ongoing work on the same
> code areas.  That means that rebasing across any such other work is
> going to lead to merge conflicts.
[...]
> If git were smarter about resolving pure indentation conflicts

FWIW, git allows you to provide your own merge driver for specific types
of files.  For example, gnulib provides a git-merge-changelog driver
that helps merging GNU-style ChangeLog files.  Also, git has a few
drivers of its own.

> (possibly causing nightmares for Python addicts; but actually a useful
> resolution would have to be indentation-correct in other languages as
> well), this would be less of a problem.

No nightmares when you delimit your driver to a specific set of files.
I'm not sure it's worth for this specific issue though.

Cheers,
Ralf