Re: Regarding smerge upper/lower; needs NEWS

[Richard Copley <rcopley@gmail.com>]

On 7 April 2017 at 20:24, Richard Copley <rcopley@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 April 2017 at 20:23, Richard Copley <rcopley@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7 April 2017 at 20:09, Noam Postavsky <npostavs@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 2:06 PM, Richard Copley <rcopley@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=bdfee01a6567b9f08f82bc84d1196e6cb62587ca
>>>>
>>>> I've had plenty of time to think about this and I still don't get
>>>> it. Why are we calling the left window UPPER and the right window
>>>> LOWER? In the lower pane (the conflicted file for resolution)
>>>> they are called "variant A" and "variant B". Shouldn't we call
>>>> them that too, so that we know which one is which?
>>>>
>>>
>>> You seem to be talking about ediff or emerge, but this thread is about
>>> smerge which operates in a single buffer, no windows involved.
>>
>> Thanks, I knew I must have been missing something. IMO making
>> smerge weird is a disadvantage of this change.
>
> Sorry. Let's say I meant emerge.

Sorry again, I didn't mean to be mysterious. Think of me as just a
stupid user. (I am just a stupid user.)

Here's what happens, but please be sympathetic, because I haven't
taken the trouble to create an artificial merge conflict in order to
create an exact recipe. This is from memory and some of the details
are very likely wrong.

I attempt an SVN merge which fails and leaves the file conflicted.

I visit the resulting file, containing conflict markers, in Emacs.

The buffer's in SMerge mode or something (I guess because of
magic-mode-alist but I didn't debug to check).

Think: now I want to use Ediff (Ediff is why I use Emacs). How?

C-h m

Seems like it's something totally weird and impossible to remember.
([C-x ^ e]? I really don't remember, I'd have to check.)
OK, yuck! But let's try it.

Bang! UPPER on the left and LOWER on the right, with something else
entirely underneath.

It's not exactly difficult to deal with, but it's distracting.