Re: fuzzy patch application

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 01:37:12PM -0800, Stefan Beller wrote:

> > This is not exactly an answer to your question, but "git am -3" is often
> > a better solution than trying to fuzz patches. It assumes the patches
> > are Git patches (and record their origin blobs), and that you have that
> > blob (which should be true if the patches are based on the normal kernel
> > history, and you just fetch that history into your repository).
> >
> > I've found that this often manages to apply patches that "git apply"
> > will not by itself. And I also find the resulting conflicts to be much
> > easier to deal with than patch's ".rej" files.
> 
> I have been told this a couple of times before; do we want to make -3
> the default (in 2.13 then) ?

I dunno. I always use it, but I'm not sure if there are any downsides,
aside from a little extra processing time. It does have some
incompatibilities with other options. And I think it kicks in rename
detection (but I might be mis-remembering another feature). That could
be surprising, I guess.

The original dates all the way back to 47f0b6d5d (Fall back to three-way
merge when applying a patch., 2005-10-06), but I don't see any rationale
for not making it the default. Junio probably could give a better
answer.

-Peff