Re: Trouble merging line-numbers branch into master

[Noam Postavsky <npostavs@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Sat, Jul 8, 2017 at 4:04 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> I've just merged the branch, and didn't have any such problems.  In
> the diffs I see no changes due to whitespace only, and the only merge
> conflict I had, in NEWS, had nothing to do with whitespace and was
> resolved without introducing any whitespace.
>
> So I really don't understand what is this all about.  If SPC followed
> by a TAB is detected when you merge, it was already there in master
> before the merge, and the merge itself is not the problem.

The old git hook checks *both* sides of the merge, so changes
introduced on the master branch after you branched off would also
trigger the error, but only if you happen to hit a conflict or
otherwise end up editing the merge commit message for some other
reason (e.g., using a dumb terminal which can't run $EDITOR).

The latter confusing condition is why the hook was changed to only
check the newly merged in changes, but you need to run './autogen git'
to update it in your local copy (I assume Kaushal had not done so,
hence the error).

>> Slowly and gradually, as more merges and commits happen in future, all such mixtures of tabs+spaces will
>> get removed.
>
> They cannot be removed completely, because indentation doesn't always
> end in a column whose number is an integral multiple of the tab width.

I believe git only complains about tab following spaces, not spaces
following tabs.