Documentation/technical/api-merge.txt

   1 merge API
   2 =========
   3
   4 The merge API helps a program to reconcile two competing sets of
   5 improvements to some files (e.g., unregistered changes from the work
   6 tree versus changes involved in switching to a new branch), reporting
   7 conflicts if found.  The library called through this API is
   8 responsible for a few things.
   9
  10  * determining which trees to merge (recursive ancestor consolidation);
  11
  12  * lining up corresponding files in the trees to be merged (rename
  13    detection, subtree shifting), reporting edge cases like add/add
  14    and rename/rename conflicts to the user;
  15
  16  * performing a three-way merge of corresponding files, taking
  17    path-specific merge drivers (specified in `.gitattributes`)
  18    into account.
  19
  20 Data structures
  21 ---------------
  22
  23 * `mmbuffer_t`, `mmfile_t`
  24
  25 These store data usable for use by the xdiff backend, for writing and
  26 for reading, respectively.  See `xdiff/xdiff.h` for the definitions
  27 and `diff.c` for examples.
  28
  29 * `struct ll_merge_options`
  30
  31 Check ll-merge.h for details.
  32
  33 Low-level (single file) merge
  34 -----------------------------
  35
  36 Check ll-merge.h for details.