Merge recursive strategy

You’ve must heard about “git merge recursive strategy” which is the default algorithm that git uses when merging two branches. How does it work and why is it good?

Basics – elements on a merge

You’ve got two branches you want to merge. The basic “players” to consider are:

The “source”: the changeset you’re merging from. Changeset 16 in our sample below.

The “destination”: the changeset you’re merging to. 15 in our case.

The “ancestor”: the changeset (or commit) which is the nearest parent of the “source” and the “destination”, which is “10” in our case.

So, we will merge 16 and 15 using 10 as ancestor. We DO need an ancestor to be used in “three-way” merges (more about it here).

When is “merge recursive” needed?

But, sometimes the scenario is not that simple. What if we find “two common ancestors”? The picture below shows how in this example we have to possible “common ancestors”.

Please note: the example is a little bit forced since there’s not a good reason (initially) for the developer merging from changeset 11 into 16 instead of merging from changeset 15 (the latest from the branch “main” at the point of the merge). But let’s assume he has to do it for a reason (like cset:11 was stable and 13 and 15 weren’t at the time, for instance). The point is: between 15 and 16 there’s not a single unique ancestors but two ancestors at the same “distance”: 12 and 11.

While it won’t happen on a daily basis, it is really likely to happen with long lived branches or complex branch topologies (the case depicted above is the shortest one driving to the “multiple ancestor” problem, but it can happen too with several changesets and branches in between the “crossed” merges).

One solution is to “select” one of the ancestors as the valid one for the merge (which is the option Mercurial takes) but as we will see below, it has many drawbacks.

How “merge recursive” works?

When more than one valid ancestor is found, the “recursive merge” strategy will create a new unique “virtual ancestor” merging the ones initially found. The following image depicts the algorithm:

A new “ancestor 2” will be used as “ancestor” to merge the “src” and “dst”.

The “merge recursive strategy” is able to find a better solution than just “selecting one of the two” as I’ll describe below.

Why merge recursive is better – a step by step example

Let me use the following “notation” in thenext example: a file “foo.c” with three lines like these:

b
c
d

It will be described as: /foo.c = bcd.

Of course, for the sake of simplicity I’ll be using “stupid lines” like “abc” but assume the example is valid for real code too.

Let’s take a look at the following case in the diagram below:

I’ll try to describe it changeset by changeset:

0 -> we had a file foo.c with content foo=bcd (three lines, first is “b”, second is “c” and third is “d”)

1 -> we edit foo.c on a branch and add a new line so it ends up being foo=bcde

2 -> we modify the second line of the file on “main”. Now the file is foo=bCd

3 -> we create a new branch from cset “2” and add a new line at the beginning so it is now foo.c=abCd

4 -> going back to “task001” we modify the line we just added: foo.c=bcdE

5 -> we “undo” the change we just did on “main”: foo.c=bcd

6 -> we MERGE “4” and “3” and create “6” as foo.c=abCdE (we combine the changes we made on “task002” (adding a new line at the beginning) with the ones in “task001” (adding “E” at the end) and also the change coming from “2” on /main.

7 -> we now MERGED “4” and “5” introducing the change from “4” (last line added) into “main”: foo.c=bcdE

If we now merge “task002” on “main” (cset “7” and cset “6”) what should we get?

We should get the “addition” on “task002” (a new line “a” at the beginning) on top of “7”, isn’t it?

The expected result is: foo.c=abcdE.

We shouldn’t get the line “C” in uppercase as it is on “task002” because we fixed it afterwards on “main”.

As you can see on the diagram, I highlighted the changesets “4” and “2” because they’re the two possible common ancestors from “6” and “7”.

Which one should be choose?

Mercurial will choose “4” because its algorithm chooses the “deepest” ancestor in case that more than one is found.

What happens if we choose “4”?

We will merge 4=bcdE, 6=abCdE and 7=abcdE and the automatic result (by any 3-way merge tool will be):

First line -> a (it’s there on 6 and 7)

Second line -> b (it’s there on the three contributors)

Third line -> C (changed on “6” but unchanged on “4” and “7”)

Fourth line -> d (unchanged)

Fifth line -> E (unchanged)

So, we automatically get foo=abCdE which is WRONG!!

We took “C” instead of “c” due to the wrong ancestor selection.

How recursive merge fixes the mess?

As I described above, the first thing “recursive merge” is going to do is to calculate a new “virtual ancestor” merging “4” and “2” as the following picture shows:

The result “cset X” is foo=bCdE.

Later, “cset X” is used as the “ancestor” of “6” and “7” and then we get:

Ancestor: foo=bCdeE

Source: foo=abCdE

Destination: foo=bcdE

Result: foo=abcdE -> which is what we were looking for!

The calculated result takes into account the “fix” done in changeset “5” and hence the result is correct!

Why it is so good?

If you have to deal with branching and merging and you don’t have a good merge algorithm, you can end up with broken files without notice!

In short: Git will do it correctly, Hg will break the result, and SVN and others will simply mess up the whole thing.

In Plastic SCM 4.0 we’ve also implemented “merge recursive” algorithm, so we are able to produce the same result (in fact, our algorithm is even more powerful, handling correctly cases that even Git is unable to deal with successfully).

More cases

I focused on “file conflicts” today but it is easy to come up with examples affecting directory structures too. I’ll cover it in a follow up blog post.

Wrapping up

Branching and merging are the two weapons you must have in your developer’s toolset… but make sure you have the best possible ones, the ones that really do the job.