.\" dpkg manual page - dpkg-mergechangelogs(1)
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.\" Copyright © 2009-2010 Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>
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.TH dpkg\-mergechangelogs 1 "2011-08-14" "Debian Project" "dpkg suite"
.SH NAME
dpkg\-mergechangelogs \- 3-way merge of debian/changelog files
.
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B dpkg\-mergechangelogs
.RI [ option "...] " old " " new-a " " new-b " [" out ]
.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.P
This program will use the 3 provided versions of the Debian changelog to
generate a merged changelog file. The resulting changelog is stored
in the file \fIout\fP or output to the standard output if that parameter is
not given.
.P
Each entry is identified by its version number and they are assumed to
be not conflicting, they are simply merged in the right order (by
decreasing version number). When \fB\-\-merge\-prereleases\fP is used, the
part of the version number after the last tilde is dropped so that
1.0\-1~exp1 and 1.0\-1~exp5 are considered to be the same entry. When the
same version is available in both \fInew-a\fP and \fInew-b\fP, a standard
line-based 3-way merge is attempted (provided that the module
Algorithm::Merge is available \[em] it's part of the package
libalgorithm\-merge\-perl \[em] otherwise you get a global conflict on the
content of the entry).
.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.BR \-\-merge\-prereleases ", " \-m
Drop the part after the last tilde in the version number when doing
version comparison to identify if two entries are supposed to be
the same or not.
.sp
This is useful when you keep using the same changelog entry but you
increase its version number regularly. For instance, you might have
2.3\-1~exp1, 2.3\-1~exp2, ... until the official release 2.3\-1 and they
are all the same changelog entry that has evolved over time.
.TP
.B \-\-help
Show the usage message and exit.
.TP
.B \-\-version
Show the version and exit.
.
.SH LIMITATIONS
.P
Anything that is not parsed by Dpkg::Changelog is lost during the merge.
This might include stuff like vim modelines, comments which were not
supposed to be there, etc.
.
.SH INTEGRATION WITH GIT
.P
If you want to use this program to merge Debian changelog files in a git
repository, you have first to register a new merge driver in
\fB.git/config\fP or \fB~/.gitconfig\fP:
.P
 [merge "dpkg\-mergechangelogs"]
     name = debian/changelog merge driver
     driver = dpkg\-mergechangelogs \-m %O %A %B %A
.P
Then you have to setup the merge attribute for the debian/changelog file
either in \fB.gitattributes\fP in the repository itself, or in
\fB.git/info/attributes\fP:
.P
 debian/changelog merge=dpkg\-mergechangelogs