[wp-hackers] Useful Tools?

[Brian Meidell Andersen]

The user would need a lot of handholding while the modified new version 
was created - you can't rely on it happening automatically. Even with 
moderately simple modifications, all the diff tools I know of will make 
conflicts, even at times where there shouldn't be.

Say that the users own version (1.u) puts a block of code at line 7, and 
the new version 2.0 also puts a block of code at line 7.
What do you do? You can discard the 1.u code (probably wrong), discard 
the 2.0 code (potential breakage), place the 1.u code before the 2.0 
code (potential conflicts) or place the 2.0 code before the 1.u code 
(more potential conflicts).
This choice can not be made my a script, and in many cases it can't be 
made by a user who isn't reasonably knowledgeable about what is going on.

Whenever I need to do a three way comparison/merge (which is pretty much 
the problem we are facing), I use Araxis Merge, which is reasonably good 
for stuff like this.
Take a look at the screenshot:
http://www.meidell.dk/relay/files/shot_2004_07_24_2.png
When I am merging branches of code at work, I need to do this now and 
then. If it's even af halfway complicated merge, it's something that 
requires my fullest attention.

The problem of merging two derived versions of the same file is by no 
means uncommon, and the three way merge tool is the best solution I have 
seen.
I am not saying it's impossible to completely automate it (claims like 
that are always dangerous due to the annoying bunch of geniuses running 
loose in the world), but I have never seen it done because of the three 
choices listed in the tooltip on the screenshot.
Now, because we know the nature of our content, we might have a better 
shot at making a good merging interface, but I don't think we can 
automate it and still insure the of integrity of the resulting merge.

/Brian

Carthik Sharma wrote:

>>I'm going to be creating some public interfaces for Mark Pilgrim's feed
>>finder (http://diveintomark.org/projects/feed_finder/ ) so an enterprising
>>plugin author could (for example) create a plugin that filled in the XML
>>field in the link manager by auto discovering feeds without having to
>>worry about details at too low a level.
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>
>A hook for when a Link is added would be required for this. That would
>be a useful hook for something else I had in mind - FeedonFeeds
>integration. This would be a useful addition.
>
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>>So if you could have any hosted tool or web service to make your life
>>easier, what would it be?
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>
>1. A wordpress hosted Xref, updated nightly, well linked-to. We could
>even call it a part of the available documentation. :)
>
>2. I've thought about this some, it would be neat if we had a tool that created 
>a) a diff of the user's modified index.php (for say 1.0.1) against the
>1.0.1 default index.php
>b) used that diff, and a diff between the default 1.0.1 template and
>the default 1.2 template to create a new index.php for use with the
>user's upgraded 1.2 blog
>(same is true for 1.2 and 1.3)
>I know it sounds complicated, was just a thought.
>
>Regards,
>Carthik.
>
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>
>>--
>>Matt Mullenweg
>>  http://photomatt.net | http://wordpress.org
>>http://pingomatic.com | more soon...
>>
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