[dancek]

An interesting point.

I think it would be better to merge ASTs rather than text files that represent code. The annoying issues with merges are all about the text representation. When there's actually different logic changes in two different directions the merges cease to be annoying and start to require domain knowledge.

Of course getting from this hand-wavey thought to working software is difficult. Perhaps we first need to start focusing more on the tree nature of code even in the editing tools?

[hinkley]

I wish I kept better bookmarks. There was a project years ago where the diff tool had a tokenizer per language so that it could diff the code similarly to what you suggest. Obviously it did not take over the world.

But yes, that should help.

It always annoys me that I add a method and the diff tool says that I inserted code before the last curly bracket for the previous function, instead of balancing the brackets.