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Running Your First Merge

Running Your First Merge

This topic explains how to perform your first Merge operation using the deltanova-year.x.y.z.jar command-line tool. Merge combines two revised versions of an XML document with the original to produce a merged output, preserving changes from both revisions where possible.

For a conceptual introduction to Merge see Getting Started with Merge.

Running a Merge

The command-line tool supports three-way merge operations. Replace year.x.y.z with your release version number.

Viewing Available Merge Commands 

java -jar deltanova-year.x.y.z.jar describe <pipeline>

Merging Two Revisions Against a Common Ancestor 

java -jar deltanova-year.x.y.z.jar merge concurrent original.xml revised1.xml revised2.xml merged.xml

This produces merged.xml containing the merged content. Where both revisions made changes to the same region, conflict markers are inserted.

Merging n Number of Files Using Concurrent Merge 

java -jar deltanova-year.x.y.z.jar merge concurrent <ancestorName> <ancestorFile> (<versionName> <versionFile>)+ <resultFile> <params>

Merging Three Files Using Concurrent3 Merge 

java -jar deltanova-year.x.y.z.jar merge concurrent3 <ancestorName> <ancestorFile> <version1Name> <version1File> <version2Name> <version2File> <resultFile> <params>

Concurrent3 merge provides the option to produce a wide variety of result formats.

Merging n Number of Files Using sequential merge 

java -jar deltanova-year.x.y.z.jar merge sequential (<versionName> <versionFile>)+ <resultFile> <params>

Understanding the Merge Result

The merged output uses the DeltaMerge format. Sections with no conflicts appear as normal XML. Conflicting sections are annotated with deltaxml: attributes to identify which revision each change came from.

The result can be processed further:

  • Display in an XML authoring tool such as Oxygen, XMetal, or FrameMaker (with tracked-changes output enabled)

  • Post-process with XSLT to resolve conflicts automatically using a rule

  • Use concurrent3 merge to produce various result formats.

  • Pass to the Check component to verify structural validity