Usage: |merge %destination-desk ~source-ship %source-desk |merge %destination-desk ~source-ship %source-desk, =gem %strategy |merge %destination-desk ~source-ship %source-desk, =cas ud+5 We support various merge strategies. A "commit" is a snapshot of the files with a list of parents plus a date. Most commits have one parent; a "merge" commit is a commit with two parents. The %base desk starts with an initial commit with no parents; commits with several parents ("octopus merges") are possible but we don't generate them right now. Unless otherwise specified, all of the following create a new commit with the source and destination commits as parents. Several strategies need a "merge-base". They find it by identifying the most recent common ancestor of the two desks. If none, fail with %merge-no-merge-base; if there are two or more, pick one. %init: the only way to create a desk. Not a true merge, since it simply assigns the source commit to the destination. %fine: if source or destination are in the ancestry of each other, use the newer one; else abort. If the destination is ahead of the source, succeed but do nothing. If the source is ahead of the destination, assign the next revision number to the source commit. Some call this "fast-forward". %meet: combine changes, failing if both sides changed the same file. Specifically, take diff(merge-base,source) and diff(merge-base,destination) and combine them as long as those diffs touch different files. %mate: combine changes, failing if both sides changed the same part of a file. Identical to %meet, except that some marks, like %hoon, allow intelligent merge of changes to different parts of a file. %meld: combine changes; if both sides changed the same part of a file, use the version of the file in the merge-base. %only-this: create a merge commit with exactly the contents of the destination desk. %only-that: create a merge commit with exactly the contents of the source commit. %take-this: create a merge commit with exactly the contents of the destination desk except take any files from the source commit which are not in the destination desk. %take-that: create a merge commit with exactly the contents of the source commit except preserve any files from the destination desk which are not in the source commit. %meet-this: merge as in %meet, except if both sides changed the same file, use the version in the destination desk. %meet-that: merge as in %meet, except if both sides changed the same file, use the version in the source commit. # Examples and notes: The most common merge strategy is %mate, which is a normal 3-way merge which aborts on conflict. %take-that is useful to "force" an OTA. After running %take-that, you're guaranteed to have exactly the files in the source commit plus any files you separately added. We speak of merging into a destination *desk* from a source *commit* because while you can only merge on top of a desk, you can merge from historical commits. For example, |merge %old our %base, =cas ud+5, =gem %init will create a new desk called %old with the 5th commit in %base. You can revert the contents of a desk to what they were yesterday with |merge %base our %base, =cas da+(sub now ~d1), =gem %only-that Note this is a normal %only-that merge, which means you're creating a *new* commit with the old *contents*. %meld is rarely used on its own, however if you specify %auto or omit the merge strategy, %kiln will run a %meld merge into a scratch desk and then annotate the conflicts there. If you resolve merge conflicts manually, for example by mounting the desks, copying the files in unix and then running |commit, you should usually run an %only-this merge. This will not change the newly-fixed contents of your desk, but it will record that the merge happened so that those conflicts don't reappear in later merges. If you get a %merge-no-merge-base error, this means you're trying to merge two desks which have no common ancestors. You need to give them a common ancestor by choosing a merge strategy which doesn't need a merge-base, like %only-this, %only-that, %take-this, or %take-that. %take-this could be useful to install 3rd party software, but you couldn't get subsequent updates this way, since the files would already exist in the destination desk. Something like "take only the files which aren't in my OTA source or any other 3rd party app" would be basically correct. This would require a parameter listing the desks to not conflict with. %meet-this and %meet-that imply the existence of %mate-this and %mate-that, but those don't exist yet.