Merging

Merging is a very difficult process but almost certainly the only thing that differentiates it from almost every other library tool that I know. Merging is what unionfs is about.

Merging, in general, is the name of the process when two libraries are taken to be the data base of one new library. However in order to simplify code and get closer to intuition, merging in libarxx means to have a source archive which will be merged into a target archive. So if you have an ARX archive loaded into memory - consider this to be the "old" / "base" / "target" archive - and then merge another ARX archive into it - this is the "merge" / "source" archive - you will in fact change the content of the target archive. In this manner the three-place relation has become a two-place relation.

Especially note that merging changes both the source and the target Arxx::Archive objects. As stated above it it clear that the target Archive has to be changed. In addition to this the source Archive is changed as well! Arxx::Item objects that are added to the target Archive are excluded from the source Archive and re-included into the target Archive. If you want to keep the unchanged source Archive you should take a copy of it before starting the merge operation.

Merging will take place whenever the user calls Arxx::Library::vMerge().

---