Is there a 3 way merger tool that “understands” common refactoring?

Posted by Ian Ringrose on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ian Ringrose
Published on 2010-02-10T09:32:39Z Indexed on 2010/03/20 15:01 UTC
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refactoring

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version-control

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merge

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branching

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branch

When a simple refactoring like “rename field” has been done on one branch it can be very hard to merge the changes into the other branches. (Extract method is much harder as the merge tools don’t seem to match the unchanged blocks well)

Now in my dreams, I am thinking of a tool that can record (or work out) what well defined refactoring operations have been done on one branch and then “replay” them on the other branch, rather than trying to merge every line the refactoring has affected.

see also "Is there an intelligent 3rd merge tool that understands VB.NET" for the other half of my pain!

Also has anyone try something like MolhadoRef (blog article about MolhadoRef and Refactoring-aware SCM), This is, in theory, refactoring-aware source control.

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