[OJFord]

> I think the diffs need work. Or I need to get comfy with 3-way diffs. It's unfamiliar, and an obstacle to fixing conflicts.

You should get comfy, you won't regret it. I haven't got around to trying jj yet, but I use them in git; frequently see people messing things up or just having a hard time resolving a conflict that they wouldn't if they used (& understood) diff3.

In brief: a regular 2-way diff shows you the current state, and what you wanted to change to right? Well 3-way just adds an extra bit of information (the middle) which shows you from what state you were changing to the bottom.

So say you have:

  <<<<<< HEAD
  def wazzle(widget):
    try:
      widget.wazzle()
    except Exception:
      return False
    return True
  |||||||
  def wazzle(widget):
    widget.wazzle()
  =======
  def wazzle(widget):
    from wazzler import wazzle
    wazzle(widget)
  >>>>>>> (deadbeef Abstract wazzle implementation to own package)

If you didn't have the middle, it might not be at all clear why you were getting the conflict, and what the appropriate fix is. It allows you to see that Ah ok, master (or whatever I'm rebasing on or whatever) has changed to return a bool indicating success or error, that's fine, I was just trying to change the wazzle method to pass it to a library function instead.

Or you might have it that the same change is already in the HEAD part at the top, but there's a conflict because they put the import elsewhere. The middle then allows you to see that you were making essentially the same change, you don't care where the import goes (or like their idea better), you can just remove it and stick with the changes on HEAD.

My point is that it's strictly more information, that can help or make it easier to resolve the conflict. It shouldn't be confusing at all, because the same 2-part thing you're accustomed to is there too.