Re: "all changes left-to-right" functionality

[Nicolas JEAN <lemondedejici free fr>]

On 01/02/2011 09:12, Kai wrote:
> On 31 January 2011 00:32, Nicolas JEAN <lemondedejici free fr> wrote:
>> On 30/01/2011 02:53, Kai wrote:
>>> On 22 January 2011 05:55, Nicolas JEAN <lemondedejici free fr> wrote:
>>>> Hi dear meld people,
>>>>
>>>> I used meld today, again and with pleasure, and noticed that a
>>>> functionality is "missing" (well I was missing it).
>>>> Indeed, when comparing two folders (contrary to comparing two files), I
>>>> did not find an option to pass all differences from left to right, or
>>>> vice-versa. (In a two-folder comparison and in my opinion, that would be
>>>> copying all differing files from one side to the other.)
>>> I'm not sure what you mean here. You can already copy whole folders
>>> from one side to another. Do you mean that you want to copy *only*
>>> files that exist in both folders and are different? In what situations
>>> do you want to do this?
>> Yes, I think you get my idea. My goal is indeed to synchronise two
>> folders; for the sake of clarity, here is what should be done (from left
>> to right):
>> 1. if two files exist, but are different, then right file is replaced
>> with left file (assumed to be newer);
>> 2. if two files exist and are the same, don't do anything (or maybe ask
>> the user if files should be overwritten);
>> 3. if right file exists but left file does not, delete right file;
>> 4. if left file exists but right file does not, copy left file to the right;
> If I read this correctly, this is exactly the same as copying one
> directory over the other, except that timestamps, etc. on existing
> identical files should be preserved.

You're right, I got confused by case 3, because I was thinking of
merging two dirs rather than copying one over the other.

>> My case is that of the synchronisation between two svn folders, where it
>> might be important that files in the right folder that haven't changed
>> keep their timestamps, rather than be overwritten (thus case 2).
> That sounds like a reasonable use case, but it's also a fairly niche
> requirement.

Absolutely.

>> But I believe this very much depends on what the user wants to achieve;
>> thus, this functionality may be nicer if the user is presented with a
>> window where he chooses what to do in each of the 4 above cases (radio
>> buttons or check boxes), before he/she runs the "merge"/synchronisation.
>>
>> Do you think it would be nice to have this in meld, or rather confusing,
>> and thus leave this capacity to other synchronisation programs?
> I think that by itself it would probably be too confusing to have in
> Meld itself. Also, there is could be some odd behavioural interactions
> with other features of Meld. e.g., do we consider files to be
> identical if they're only identical post-filtering? is that yet
> another option? what do we do about files filtered out at the
> directory level? etc.

I'm not sure what you mean with filtering here, but I agree with your
general point: it might well be too confusing to enter meld.

> If Meld had a plug-in architecture, I'd say it should be a plugin...
> but we don't have one yet.

:)

Cheers,
Nico