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Bug 110866

Summary:	[Wizards] Suggestion for making merge operation more intuitive
Product:	[Eclipse Project] Platform	Reporter:	Carolyn MacLeod <carolynmacleod4>
Component:	CVS	Assignee:	platform-cvs-inbox <platform-cvs-inbox>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	P5	Keywords:	helpwanted
Version:	3.2
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Windows XP
Whiteboard:	stalebug

Description Carolyn MacLeod

2005-09-27 16:01:55 EDT

3.2 M2

My first time merging a branch back into HEAD, and I got quite confused.
My error: I still had my branch loaded when I brought up the Merge dialog.
I specified my end tag (branch_x), and start tag (Root_branch_x), and I was 
surprised that there were no changes when I clicked Finish.

I suspect that this is a common "beginner error", and I believe that the Merge 
dialog can help out significantly as follows:

- Add a label above "Branch or version to be merged (end tag):" that says 
something like: "Merging into: loaded_branch" where loaded_branch is the name 
of the branch that is currently loaded into the workspace for the selected 
resource. This would be a good clue to the user... for example, in my case, I 
would have read it and thought, "Merging into branch_x? No - I want to merge 
into HEAD".

- Just the above is nice, but not quite sufficient to help the brand new user 
figure out what to do next. I think that a little "red X error message" should 
be shown if the user specifies the same branch for the end tag as the one that 
is currently loaded for the selected resource. The message can suggest that 
they need to go and load the branch they want to merge into.

Hopefully, these 2 things together can help some future new users get through 
their first merge.  :)

Comment 1 Carolyn MacLeod

2005-09-27 16:40:10 EDT

Another suggestion. After the user selects their end tag, it would be nice if 
the dialog seeded the start tag field with the word "Root_".

Here's why: I created my branch 2 weeks before I tried to merge, and - as a 
beginner - I completely forgot what the default start tag prefix was. So when 
I said "Configure Tags..." to find the start tag, I was presented with a 
really long and messy list of New tags, and I couldn't remember what letter it 
started with. <g> I had to go back and pretend to create another branch to see 
that I was looking for a version that started with "Root_".

Comment 2 Michael Valenta

2005-09-27 16:51:56 EDT

Re: comment #1 the dialog does attempt to seed the field but it will only do 
so if it finds a version that contains the text that is the branch name. I 
suspect this failed for you because the tag was not yet known. Perhaps we 
should re-attempt to seed the field after the tags are configured.

Comment 3 Carolyn MacLeod

2005-09-27 17:10:11 EDT

Re: comment 2, you may have done that - I can't remember. Anyhow, once the tag 
is configured, ctrl+space and type the letter R is sufficient to fill the 
start tag field - pretty easy.

But the real problem noted in comment 1 was that I needed help before 
configuring the tags, not after.

Comment 4 Eclipse Webmaster

2019-09-06 15:36:16 EDT

This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet.

If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant.

Comment 5 Eclipse Genie

2021-12-06 18:03:37 EST

This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. As such, we're closing this bug.

If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it and reopen this bug. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant.

--
The automated Eclipse Genie.