[PATCH] please review: kicking off the tree-conflicts branch

Hi folks,

Steve and I have spent some time trying to get a patch done
that is suitable to kick off the tree conflicts branch.

The patch is supposed to show the ideas behind what we are going
to do on the branch. We don't want to start the branch off by
committing a diff that is so large that no one will be bothered
to review it, or will have a hard time doing so.

So we tried to keep implementation details out of it for now (mostly),
and left a few other changes we've already made here and there for later.

The comments in the treeconflicts.h header give an overview of the
current design ideas. That file is right at the top of the patch,
so if you don't want to review the whole thing you can still comfortably
comment on the design notes if you want to.

Most functions that we are currently planning to add on the branch
are declared in this patch, and their bodies are either empty
(if they are obvious) or contain some comments that we plan to change
into code over time as we continue working on the branch.

It would be great if especially people with skills in either
or both the working copy and conflict areas could take a look
and let us know if we are on the right track.

Patch attached.

Thanks,

-- 
Stefan Sperling <stsp@elego.de>                 Software Developer
elego Software Solutions GmbH                            HRB 77719
Gustav-Meyer-Allee 25, Gebaeude 12        Tel:  +49 30 23 45 86 96 
13355 Berlin                              Fax:  +49 30 23 45 86 95
http://www.elego.de                 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Olaf Wagner