merge-recursive: add explanation for src_entry and dst_entryen/merge-recursive-fixes

If I have to walk through the debugger and inspect the values found in
here in order to figure out their meaning, despite having known these
things inside and out some years back, then they probably need a comment
for the casual reader to explain their purpose.

Reviewed-By: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/merge-recursive.c b/merge-recursive.c
index 306db8eaf5..cedb7c3772 100644
--- a/merge-recursive.c
+++ b/merge-recursive.c
@@ -513,6 +513,25 @@ static void record_df_conflict_files(struct merge_options *o,
 
 struct rename {
 	struct diff_filepair *pair;
+	/*
+	 * Purpose of src_entry and dst_entry:
+	 *
+	 * If 'before' is renamed to 'after' then src_entry will contain
+	 * the versions of 'before' from the merge_base, HEAD, and MERGE in
+	 * stages 1, 2, and 3; dst_entry will contain the respective
+	 * versions of 'after' in corresponding locations.  Thus, we have a
+	 * total of six modes and oids, though some will be null.  (Stage 0
+	 * is ignored; we're interested in handling conflicts.)
+	 *
+	 * Since we don't turn on break-rewrites by default, neither
+	 * src_entry nor dst_entry can have all three of their stages have
+	 * non-null oids, meaning at most four of the six will be non-null.
+	 * Also, since this is a rename, both src_entry and dst_entry will
+	 * have at least one non-null oid, meaning at least two will be
+	 * non-null.  Of the six oids, a typical rename will have three be
+	 * non-null.  Only two implies a rename/delete, and four implies a
+	 * rename/add.
+	 */
 	struct stage_data *src_entry;
 	struct stage_data *dst_entry;
 	unsigned processed:1;