VS Code extension for resolving Jupyter Notebook git merge conflicts.
Core Logic
At the end of the day, users should be able to resolve merge conflicts intuitively, and with regard to the cell structure of their notebooks.
Conflict Resolution UI
We show a side-by-side diff of conflicting cells, with intra-cell conflicts highlighted. Users can toggle between a 2-way diff view and a 3-way diff view with the base branch as the middle column.
Reordered Cell Handling
We treat cell matching as a special case of the assignment problem from linear optimization/operations research.
That is, given a weighted cost matrix of semantic distances between cells, we utilize the Hungarian Algorithm to find the optimal matching of cells that minimizes the total distance, even in cases of reordering.
Handles all Media (MIME) Types
HTML, LaTeX, images, SVG plots, etc. We use the same rendering engine as JupyterLab to ensure that all media types are rendered correctly in the resolver, just as they would be in the notebook itself.
Why MergeNB?
Auto-resolution
Based on user defined settings, MergeNB can automatically resolve certain classes of conflicts without user input, such as mismatched execution counts, kernel versions or trailing whitespace diffs.
Configurability
MergeNB's settings allow users to customize their merge experience, from auto-resolution preferences to UI themes and hotkeys.
Undo/Redo
Merge resolution is hard, and mistakes are inevitable. MergeNB supports undo and redo of user actions in the resolver, as well as a full history panel allowing you to jump back and forth between any state of the resolver.
Syntax highlighting
We use CodeMirror to provide syntax highlighting in code cells, for any Jupyter-kernel-supported language (e.g. Python, Scala, R, Julia, etc.).
MergeNB stands on the shoulders of all of the hardworking maintainers that came before it. Here are a few open source projects that made it possible:
- JupyterLab Rendermime
- Visual Studio Code
- CodeMirror
- Zustand
- KaTeX