[TxMt] Merging mine with yours

[Allan Odgaard]

On 11/08/2005, at 11.10, Andreas Wahlin wrote:

> Say I begin to edit stuff like furious in the bundle editor, and  
> then a new version comes along with some new stuff, how do these  
> two get merged, if at all?

It will merge it so that you do get the new stuff, except for the  
items you edited or deleted.

So it should act like if you edited my master-copy, and if both of us  
makes an edit, your version wins.

And the technical version:

• Initially all items are in TextMate.app/Contents/SharedSupport
• Each item contains an UUID (universal unique identifier).
• If you edit an item, the modified version is stored in ~/Library/ 
Application Support/TextMate
• If you delete an item (or bundle), it stores the UUID of that item  
in the preferences file.

So when starting TextMate, all it does is, load all the default  
items, except those marked as deleted in your preferences, or those  
that have a version in ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate.

Due to the UUID it will be able to recognize items even if you rename  
them.

My suggested way to deal with bundles is to create a Custom bundle  
where you keep your own stuff.
And when possible, rather than edit a default item, duplicate it and  
make changes to the copy.

The latter is generally not possible when dealing with key bindings  
-- I'm considering having it only store the new key binding in ~/ 
Library/... when the actual item is unchanged (and thus take the rest  
from the default version). I'm also thinking of adding a way to see  
which items differ from the default version in the bundle editor and  
if the default has been updated since your change (with something  
like a restore button).

This however is a little down on the to-do ;)

> Same goes for themes.

Themes are unfortunately not as advanced. When you edit a theme, it  
stored your edited version in ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/ 
Themes and will from then on use that in favor of the default  
version. I may introduce merging of themes (and restore to default).