AGENTS.md - markly-merge Development Guide

🎯 Project Overview

markly-merge is a format-specific implementation of the *-merge gem family for Markdown files using the Markly parser. It provides intelligent Markdown file merging using AST analysis.

Core Philosophy: Intelligent Markdown merging that preserves structure, formatting, and links while applying updates from templates.

Repository: https://github.com/kettle-rb/markly-merge
Current Version: 1.0.0
Required Ruby: >= 3.2.0 (currently developed against Ruby 4.0.1)

🏗️ Architecture: Format-Specific Implementation

What markly-merge Provides

  • Markly::Merge::SmartMerger – Markdown-specific SmartMerger implementation
  • Markly::Merge::FileAnalysis – Markdown file analysis with section extraction
  • Markly::Merge::NodeWrapper – Wrapper for Markly AST nodes
  • Markly::Merge::PartialTemplateMerger – Section-level partial merges
  • Markly::Merge::MergeResult – Markdown-specific merge result
  • Markly::Merge::ConflictResolver – Markdown conflict resolution
  • Markly::Merge::FreezeNode – Markdown freeze block support
  • Markly::Merge::DebugLogger – Markly-specific debug logging

Key Dependencies

Gem Role
ast-merge (~> 4.0) Base classes and shared infrastructure
tree_haver (~> 5.0) Unified parser adapter (wraps Markly)
markly (~> 0.15) CommonMark Markdown parser (MRI only)
version_gem (~> 1.1) Version management

Parser Backend

markly-merge uses the Markly parser exclusively via TreeHaver’s :markly backend:

Backend Parser Platform Notes
:markly Markly MRI only Fast CommonMark parser, native extension

📁 Project Structure

lib/markly/merge/
├── smart_merger.rb              # Main SmartMerger implementation
├── partial_template_merger.rb   # Section-level merging
├── file_analysis.rb             # Markdown file analysis
├── node_wrapper.rb              # AST node wrapper
├── merge_result.rb              # Merge result object
├── conflict_resolver.rb         # Conflict resolution
├── freeze_node.rb               # Freeze block support
├── debug_logger.rb              # Debug logging
└── version.rb

spec/markly/merge/
├── smart_merger_spec.rb
├── partial_template_merger_spec.rb
├── file_analysis_spec.rb
└── integration/

🔧 Development Workflows

Running Tests

# Full suite
bundle exec rspec

# Single file (disable coverage threshold check)
K_SOUP_COV_MIN_HARD=false bundle exec rspec spec/markly/merge/smart_merger_spec.rb

# Markly backend tests
bundle exec rspec --tag markly

Coverage Reports

cd /home/pboling/src/kettle-rb/ast-merge/vendor/markly-merge
bin/rake coverage && bin/kettle-soup-cover -d

📝 Project Conventions

API Conventions

SmartMerger API

  • merge – Returns a String (the merged Markdown content)
  • merge_result – Returns a MergeResult object
  • to_s on MergeResult returns the merged content as a string

PartialTemplateMerger API

  • merge – Merges a template section into a specific location in destination
  • Used by ast-merge-recipe for section-level updates

Markdown-Specific Features

Heading-Based Sections:

# Section 1
Content for section 1

## Subsection 1.1
Nested content

# Section 2
Content for section 2

Freeze Blocks:

<!-- markly-merge:freeze -->
Custom content that should not be overridden
<!-- markly-merge:unfreeze -->

Standard content that merges normally

Link Reference Preservation:

[link text][ref]

[ref]: https://example.com

🧪 Testing Patterns

TreeHaver Dependency Tags

Available tags:

  • :markly – Requires Markly backend
  • :markdown_parsing – Requires Markdown parser

✅ CORRECT:

RSpec.describe Markly::Merge::SmartMerger, :markly do
  # Skipped if Markly not available
end

❌ WRONG:

before do
  skip "Requires Markly" unless defined?(Markly)  # DO NOT DO THIS
end

💡 Key Insights

  1. Heading-based structure: Sections matched by heading text
  2. .text strips formatting: When matching by text, backticks and other formatting are removed
  3. Link references preserved: Reference-style links maintained during merge
  4. PartialTemplateMerger: Supports injecting template sections into specific locations
  5. Freeze blocks use HTML comments: <!-- markly-merge:freeze -->
  6. MRI only: Markly requires native extensions, MRI only

🚫 Common Pitfalls

  1. Markly requires MRI: Does not work on JRuby or TruffleRuby
  2. NEVER use manual skip checks – Use dependency tags (:markly)
  3. Text matching strips formatting – Match on plain text, not markdown syntax
  4. Do NOT load vendor gems – They are not part of this project; they do not exist in CI
  5. Use tmp/ for temporary files – Never use /tmp or other system directories

🔧 Markdown-Specific Notes

Node Types

document         # Root node
heading          # # Heading
paragraph        # Regular text
code_block       # ```code```
list             # - item or 1. item
link             # [text](url)
image            # ![alt](src)

Text Matching Behavior

Source:     ### The `*-merge` Gem Family
.text:      "The *-merge Gem Family\n"

# Backticks, bold, italic stripped in .text

Merge Behavior

  • Headings: Matched by heading text (stripped of formatting)
  • Sections: Content from heading to next same-level heading
  • Paragraphs: Position-based within sections
  • Code blocks: Matched by language and content
  • Lists: Can be merged or replaced
  • Links: Reference-style links preserved
  • Freeze blocks: Protect customizations from template updates