I've been using vim as my sole code editor for a couple of years now at work. I find that the more I use it and the more I learn (there will always be more to learn about vim) the happier I am with this fantastic tool.
After working through some hairy code merges recently I realised I needed a better approach than relying on inline diffs, where merge conflicts are represented in a single file like so:
<<<<<<< incoming
Someone else's code
=======
My code
>>>>>>> outgoing
Inline diffs are great for resolving relatively simple conflicts but can quickly become confusing if conflicts span many lines or there are significant differences between files.
So I configured Mercurial to open vimdiff upon merge
conflicts, but the default three-paned vertical-split view wasn't quite
what I wanted. It didn't include the base version of the conflicted
file, and the default window layout made it hard to see exactly what was
going on.
A little research turned up a blog post showing how to better configure vimdiff when using git. We use Mercurial at work so I adapted this hint to work with Mercurial's MergeProgram configuration:
# Three-way merge with vimdiff (shows result in bottom window)
# Based on http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MergingWithVim
# and http://www.toofishes.net/blog/three-way-merging-git-using-vim/
[ui]
merge = vimdiff
[merge-tools]
vimdiff.executable = vim
vimdiff.args = -d -c "wincmd J" "$output" "$local" "$other" "$base"
This will show the merged file in a large window at the bottom with the three pre-merge files of interest -- local changes, incoming/other changes, the base file -- in a three-pane vertical split at the top. With this set-up and some practice using the vimdiff commands, complex conflicting merges are much easier to deal with.
If you use vim or want to, be sure to check out the excellent
Vim Casts video podcasts to learn (or re-learn) how to get the most
out of it. Some recent episodes discuss vimdiff in the
context of a git workflow but are still full of useful pointers for
those not using git.
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