Pavel Cahyna <pavel@netbsd.org> writes:
> If you change a line which also has an unrelated change in the branch,
> this will cause a conflict when the branch is merged. Even if you make the
> same change in the branch and in HEAD.

If the merge system works as expected, then why is there a problem in
the first place?

There are about 400 lines of diff I'm going to create, in a code base
of millions of lines. Given the size of the differences between the
branches and the head, and assuming that the changes I'm making are
uncorrelated with them (which seems reasonable), I'm guessing this
means the people doing merges will end up with a handful of trivial
conflicts each to deal with at most -- and given all the changes
everyone else makes every day, it is an almost ignorable level of
trouble.

Why bother with branches if it is a problem to change a trivial
percentage of the codebase on the head?


Perry