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jj/docs/conflicts.md
Martin von Zweigbergk 71b0233efb docs: add doc about a first-class conflicts
2021-12-18 08:07:28 -08:00

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First-class conflicts

Introduction

Like Pijul and Darcs but unlike most other VCSs, Jujutsu can record conflicted states in commits. For example, if you rebase a commit and it results in a conflict, the conflict will be recorded in the rebased commit and the rebase operation will succeed. You can then resolve the conflict whenever you want. Conflicted states can be further rebased, merged, or backed out. Note that what's stored in the commit is a logical representation of the conflict, not conflict markers; rebasing a conflict doesn't result in a nested conflict markers.

Advantages

The deeper understanding of conflicts has many advantages:

  • Removes the need for things like git rebase/merge/cherry-pick/etc --continue. Instead, you get a single workflow for resolving conflicts: check out the conflicted commit, resolve conflicts, and amend.
  • Enables the "auto-rebase" feature, where descendants of rewritten commits automatically get rewritten. This feature mostly replaces Mercurial's Changeset Evolution.
  • Lets us define the change in a merge commit as being compared to the merged parents. That way, we can rebase merge commits correctly (unlike both Git and Mercurial). That includes conflict resolutions done in the merge commit, addressing a common use case for git rerere. Since the changes in a merge commit are displayed and rebased as expected, evil merges are arguably not as evil anymore.
  • Allows you to postpone conflict resolution until you're ready for it. You can easily keep all your work-in-progress commits rebased onto upstream's head if you like.
  • Criss-cross merges and octopus merges become trivial (implementation-wise); some cases that Git can't currently handle, or that would result in nested conflict markers, can be automatically resolved.
  • Enables collaborative conflict resolution. (This assumes that you can share the conflicts with others, which you probably shouldn't do if some people interact with your project using Git.)

For information about how conflicts are handled in the working copy, see here.