Thanks to the developers! (& suggestion for savegames)

[bszlrd]

You don't need much setup for IRC. You can connect via a web client., and there's no need to rgister either.
I only use git for PR-ing my models, so don't know much about it, but there are a couple guys on IRC how can help you.

[FluffyFreak]

Something I should check before I continue:

I've merged "body.h" and "body.cpp" and found that the two "body.cpp" files are now binary equal, but the two "body.h" files have equal text, but are NOT binary equal.

This suggests that they have different encoding (e.g. end-of-line chars).
The copy I'm merging from came from downloading pioneer from github as a zip file.
The copy I'm merging to is from the git clone command (as described in http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Using_git_and_GitHub)
[Edit]I'm using Notepad++ to do the merges, because it has a handy side-by-side view.
[Edit] I've not actually opened the local git copy in MSVC yet (going to wait until the merge is done) - but maybe it would alter its encoding to match with the copy I've been working on?

When I installed git, I kept the default option to convert to windows encoding when downloading to local machine, but convert to unix encoding when uploading, so not sure what's happened here.

To my understanding, I can continue, and equivalent text will be sufficient.
Later I can normalise the local copy to whatever encoding is required.

Please let me know if I'm not correct, or in danger of messing up the merge :)

This process sounds completely screwed up like you've missed some setup steps for Git.
You don't download zip files or use anything like Notepad++ to merge, you use Git to pull the data and a merge tool (WinMerge (free), Beyond Compare (paid)) to resolve conflicts etc.

After checking out your own clone of your repository (master) you should add a remote with a common name like "upstream" for the main pioneer repository like:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer.git

Then you make sure that you have everything you need using:

git fetch --all -p

Now you have all of your own data and all of the upstream data you can update your own master branch with the upstream/master like:

git checkout master
git pull origin master
git pull upstream master

You will have to resolve any differences between your master and the upstream/master (seriously do NOT try this without a merge/diff tool, there are free ones!) but once that's done you can push everything back to your own master with:

git push origin master

I think that at least part of your problem is you are going outside of Git by manually downloading a zip and then trying to do a crazy manual merge. No-one would ever get anything done if we all did that ;)

Finally, you shouldn't be making any changes on your origin/master branch anyway. The best advice is that whenever you're working on something you create a new branch using:

git checkout master
git checkout -b MyNewFeatureIsGreat

Then your master branch can remain clean and stay in sync' with the upstream master. This is a good idea for a few reasons but the main one is that if you don't then you end up with things committed to your origin/master branch which are not in the upstream/master and you can never do a Pull Request from your origin/master into the upstream/master which is the way that we merge in peoples work.

[nick]

Thanks for your replies. I'll have time to learn some git later this evening.
My git setup is fine I believe (I followed the instructions in http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Using_git_and_GitHub).

Looks like IRC isn't so hard after all (I though I'd have to install clients and configure them).

[nick]

OK, I think I've connected to pioneer IRC.
I see a list of names on the right, but so far I've not been able to type any commands (please forgive my ignorance).

[nick]

Thank you nozmajner :)
Unfortunately I still can't get a command prompt - unable to type commands...

[bszlrd]

Are you using the web client?

[nick]

yes. i don't see how i can chat.
no prompt to type any text

[nick]

i can see names on the right. information appears on the main screen, but i can't type anything

[bszlrd]

Isn't there a text entry field on the bottom? Not very pronounced.

[nick]

There's no text entry field.
I'm looking at the #pioneer tab