From: dietrich.mucha@...
Date: 2005-08-22T18:01:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Diffing/Merging Hierarchical Trees

Maybe xmlunit (http://xmlunit.sourceforge.net/, written in Java) could
give some ideas or be a starting point.


Gavin Kistner wrote:
> Imagine an XML file (with no Text nodes) where every node has a
> unique id.
>
> Imagine a user modifies a copy of this file. Modifications include
> adding some new nodes (deep in the hierarchy), modifying properties
> on a couple other nodes, and deleting some other nodes.
>
> Imagine that the original XML file changes. I want to re-apply the
> work that user did, using the modified tree. I want to get a set of
> commands from a diff between the user's work and the original, and
> then apply those commands to the changed original.
>
> This is more than a 3-way text merge primarily because nodes can be
> re-ordered or moved to a new point in the hierarchy, but the presence
> of the unique identifier on each node makes it possible to absolutely
> know that this is not a new node.
>
> ..
>
> Anyone know of any projects that do this sort of thing? Algorithms?
> White papers? Web pages?