[cvsnt] But... (was: No conflict when merging, where one is expected)

[John Peacock]

Oliver Giesen wrote:

> The intriguing thing about this is that if you indeed do not delete the
> file itself but just all lines within it and then merge it with a
> non-empty revision from a branch, CVS *does* report a conflict. I just
> tried it yesterday because this discussion sparked my interest....

I did say "under some circumstances" didn't I?  In this case, I believe it is 
because in order to apply a patch, some anchor line must be found in order to 
begin applying the diff lines.  An empty file has no text, hence no anchor, 
hence you cannot patch it.

What I was trying to get at was that a conflict is based on "changed line text" 
and a deleted line cannot be in conflict.  A deleted file has only deleted 
lines, hence will not throw a conflict.  An empty file causes a conflict for the 
reason I listed above.

John