Avoid conflicts when merging branches with mixed normalization

Currently, merging across changes in line ending normalization is
painful since files containing CRLF will conflict with normalized files,
even if the only difference between the two versions is the line
endings.  Additionally, any "real" merge conflicts that exist are
obscured because every line in the file has a conflict.

Assume you start out with a repo that has a lot of text files with CRLF
checked in (A):

      o---C
     /     \
    A---B---D

B: Add "* text=auto" to .gitattributes and normalize all files to
   LF-only

C: Modify some of the text files

D: Try to merge C

You will get a ridiculous number of LF/CRLF conflicts when trying to
merge C into D, since the repository contents for C are "wrong" wrt the
new .gitattributes file.

Fix ll-merge so that the "base", "theirs" and "ours" stages are passed
through convert_to_worktree() and convert_to_git() before a three-way
merge.  This ensures that all three stages are normalized in the same
way, removing from consideration differences that are only due to
normalization.

This feature is optional for now since it changes a low-level mechanism
and is not necessary for the majority of users.  The "merge.renormalize"
config variable enables it.

Signed-off-by: Eyvind Bernhardsen <eyvind.bernhardsen@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/cache.h b/cache.h
index c9fa3df7f5..ed73da883f 100644
--- a/cache.h
+++ b/cache.h
@@ -551,6 +551,7 @@ extern int read_replace_refs;
 extern int fsync_object_files;
 extern int core_preload_index;
 extern int core_apply_sparse_checkout;
+extern int merge_renormalize;
 
 enum safe_crlf {
 	SAFE_CRLF_FALSE = 0,
@@ -1054,6 +1055,7 @@ extern void trace_argv_printf(const char **argv, const char *format, ...);
 extern int convert_to_git(const char *path, const char *src, size_t len,
                           struct strbuf *dst, enum safe_crlf checksafe);
 extern int convert_to_working_tree(const char *path, const char *src, size_t len, struct strbuf *dst);
+extern int renormalize_buffer(const char *path, const char *src, size_t len, struct strbuf *dst);
 
 /* add */
 /*