Added some thoughts on import_xml merge algorithms

2 files changed, 39 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.be/bugs/56506b73-36cc-4e32-a578-258a219edba8/comments/4068c833-0c06-475e-8b7e-6701bc416dee/body b/.be/bugs/56506b73-36cc-4e32-a578-258a219edba8/comments/4068c833-0c06-475e-8b7e-6701bc416dee/body
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+> With interfaces/email/interactive listening on the recieving end to
+> grab new-bug emails and import them into an incoming bug repository.
+
+The email-bugs -> be-handle-mail import is based on `be import-xml`.
+The current import-xml implementation allows good control over what
+gets overwritten during a merge by overriding only those fields
+defined in the incoming XML.
+
+For clients without the versioned bugdir (e.g. they installed via a
+release tarball or their distro's packaging system), `be email-bugs`
+will not know what fields have been changed/added/etc., so it sets
+_all_ the fields in the outgoing XML.  Importing that XML file will
+override any changes that may have been made to the listed
+bugs/comments between the release and your current source version, so
+you may have to do some manual tweaking of the post-merge bugdir.
+
+One possible workaround would be to change the merge algorithm in
+import-xml to take advantage of version information given in the XML
+file.  import-xml could checkout the shared root version of any
+modified bugs, and compute the changes made by the remote user and
+those made in the local tree.  It could then merge these changes more
+intelligently, by prompting the user, keeping the local changes,
+keeping the remote changes, etc.
+
+While the more automated approach might be better, it's also more
+complicated, so for now we'll stick with the simple "override all
+fields defined in the XML" approach.
+
diff --git a/.be/bugs/56506b73-36cc-4e32-a578-258a219edba8/comments/4068c833-0c06-475e-8b7e-6701bc416dee/values b/.be/bugs/56506b73-36cc-4e32-a578-258a219edba8/comments/4068c833-0c06-475e-8b7e-6701bc416dee/values
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+Author: W. Trevor King <wking@drexel.edu>
+
+
+Content-type: text/plain
+
+
+Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:19:05 +0000
+
+
+In-reply-to: 0a995544-20dc-42a6-8d3f-348ebbc8921e
+