mergemaster annoyance or not?

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

"Daniel O'Connor" <doconnor at gsoft.com.au> wrote:

> I wonder how hard it would be to add 3 way merging (like
> sysutils/etcmerge) to mergemaster..

One complication: to do a 3-way merge you have to have the common
ancestor.  To ensure the initial availability of such would require
some infrastructure which AFAIK does not currently exist:

* A standardized place to keep the original contents of /etc --
  /origEtc or /etc-<versionId> anyone?

* A way to ensure that installation populates that place with
  the needed redundant copy of the bits, either by including the
  additional instance within the distributions or by generating
  it in the course of installation.  The former would likely be
  easier, if only because the latter would need to work for all
  installation methods.