[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2021-06-23T16:43:34Z"
 content="""
There's a reason people don't want git to automatically resolve merge
conflicts of code, and for all git-annex knows small files are code.

Or looking at it from the other perspective, non-technical git-annex
assistant users need an automatic merge conflict resolution of annexed
files, since the assistant commits changes to those files and otherwise
they could end up with a conflict they don't understand how to resolve.

And, git-annex sync inherited that from the assistant. Which may or may not
have been the best decision. One thing in favor of it being a reasonable
decision is that a conflict in an annexed file will mostly be resolved by
picking one version of the file or the other, unlike conflicts in source
code which are often resolved by using brain sweat. Large and often binary
files not being very possible for human brains to deal with directly. Or
perhaps by a tool that combines the two versions in some way, in which case
the conflict resolution leaves both versions easily accessible for such a
tool.

So git-annex does know, or can make some reasonable assumptions, about
annexed files, but generalizing those assumptions to small files would not
make sense.
"""]]
