Merge (version control)

In version control, merging (also called integration) is a fundamental operation that reconciles multiple changes made to a version-controlled collection of files. Most often, it is necessary when a file is modified on two independent branches and subsequently merged. The result is a single collection of files that contains both sets of changes.

In some cases, the merge can be performed automatically, because there is sufficient history information to reconstruct the changes, and the changes do not conflict. In other cases, a person must decide exactly what the resulting files should contain. Many revision control software tools include merge capabilities.

There are two types of merges: automatic and manual.

Manual merging is what people have to resort to (possibly assisted by merging tools) when they have to reconcile files that differ. For instance, if two systems have slightly differing versions of a configuration file and a user wants to have the good stuff in both, this can usually be achieved by merging the configuration files by hand, picking the wanted changes from both sources (this is also called two-way merging). Manual merging is also required when automatic merging runs into a change conflict; for instance, very few automatic merge tools can merge two changes to the same line of code (say, one that changes a function name, and another that adds a comment). In these cases, revision control systems resort to the user to specify the intended merge result.

Merge algorithms are an area of active research, and consequently there are many different approaches to automatic merging, with subtle differences. The more notable merge algorithms include three-way merge, recursive three-way merge, fuzzy patch application, weave merge, and patch commutation.

A three-way merge is performed after an automated difference analysis between a file "A" and a file "B" while also considering the origin, or common ancestor, of both files "C". It is a rough merging method, but widely applicable since it only requires one common ancestor to reconstruct the changes that are to be merged.

The three-way merge looks for sections which are the same in two of the three files. In this case, there are two versions of the section, and the version which is in the common ancestor "C" is discarded, while the version that differs is preserved in the output. If "A" and "B" agree, that is what appears in the output. A section that is the same in "A" and "C" outputs the changed version in "B", and likewise a section that is the same in "B" and "C" outputs the version in "A".

Sections that are different in all three files are marked as a conflict situation and left for the user to resolve.

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