[cvsnt] Merging Files and Diffs?

[Tony Hoyle]

Richard Kerry wrote:
>  
> Supplementary question about Mergeing.
> 
> Is all the mergeing during Update done by CVSNT's internal merge handler
> ?  Or can it be requested to use an external utility ?

No.  It's internal to the RCS backend.

> I'm asking this as some of my users have indicated that its handling of
> xml files is not always as we would wish.  Some of the xml handling
> tools that we are using have a habit of reorganizing the file.  This
> doesn't affect the programs using the data but can and does affect cvs's
> ability to do a merge properly.  When our tool has moved a block, the
> merge may reinstate it in the old place.  This can causes duplication of
> a block.
> 
There's the XML xdiff handler that can show you differences between XML 
files (well it attempts to).  That doesn't ship though, largely because 
it's not a lot of use.. the problem isn't generically solvable - you 
need a lot of information about the schema to be able to make sensible 
decisions about the differences (for example some elements can appear 
anywhere, but for others the ordering is important just moving it is a 
genuine difference).

You either need to get your tools to stop moving things around, or 
switch to binary mode and make sure you never have two people using the 
same XML file.

Tony