Notifcations for locally modified paths which aren't changed after a 'merge'

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007, Michael Brouwer wrote:

> On 4/5/07, Paul Burba <pburba@collab.net> wrote:
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Michael Brouwer [mailto:mb.7766@gmail.com]
> >> Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 11:19 AM
> >> To: Kamesh Jayachandran
> >> Cc: Paul Burba; Mark Phippard; Subversion Development; Daniel
> >> Rall; Peter N. Lundblad; philip@codematters.co.uk
> >> Subject: Re: [PATCH]: Stop mer'G'e notification for files
> >> with local mods that are unchanged by merge
> >>
> >> Rather than outright hiding that the file changed why not
> >> implement what svk does, and show a lower case 'g' for files
> >> that had local changes, but where unmodified by the merge
> >> since they already contained the changes being merged into them?
...
> >Assuming that 'g' (or more likely some other capital letter code) were
> >used, what you suggest is certainly doable, but do people actually find
> >that information useful at all? What would one typically do with this
> >information?
> >
> >I favor less, but more meaningful output from merge: conflicts and
> >'real' merges. I put 'g' in the same class as changes to svn:mergeinfo,
> >reporting these would just add information of questionable* value.
> >
> >*Of course take all this with the requisite grain of salt, the merges I
> >do are infrequent and relatively simple, so there may be some real value
> >in 'g' that my world doesn't typically require...
>
> A 'g' merge as opposed to a 'G' merge mean the file wasn't changed. This
> provides useful information. This usually happens if you merge something
> that had already been merged before (due to merge tracking not being used or
> the merge tracking metadata being out of date, or someone using diff+patch
> to bring a change forward). An alternative would be to display nothing,
> which since the file didn't change might work, but you'd not be telling the
> user about the conflict free duplicate merge.

Michael, in what way is a notifcations for a locally modified path
which isn't changed after a 'merge' useful to you? Yes, it's
certainly more information; but I'd like to understand your use case
more thoroughly.

Thanks, Dan