F fix merge entity conflicts

Summary

Part of https://gitlab.indiscale.com/caosdb/customers/leibniz-zmt/management/-/issues/125. Adds a new apiutils.empty_diff function to check for the identity of two Entity objects in the sense of no differences between the two entities. It also adds optional arguments to compare_entities and merge_entities to determine whether or not referenced Entity objects will be compared/merged.

Focus

Mainly, new cases to the value comparison of reference properties have been added to the compare_entities function. Note that the compare_referenced_records argument of the compare_entities function defaults False in order to restore the previous behavior. In contrast, the default of merge_references_with_empty_diffs of merge_entities is True because a) the function is Experimental anyway, so breaking previous behavior is ok, and b) in most of the (e.g., crawler) cases this is probably what a merge is expected to do.

Test Environment

Unit tests should be sufficient; but you can also test it with ZMT's Pangaea crawler.

Check List for the Author

Please, prepare your MR for a review. Be sure to write a summary and a focus and create gitlab comments for the reviewer. They should guide the reviewer through the changes, explain your changes and also point out open questions. For further good practices have a look at our review guidelines

• All automated tests pass
• Reference related issues
• Up-to-date CHANGELOG.md (or not necessary)
• Annotations in code (Gitlab comments)
  • Intent of new code
  • Problems with old code
  • Why this implementation?

Check List for the Reviewer

• I understand the intent of this MR
• All automated tests pass
• Up-to-date CHANGELOG.md (or not necessary)
• The test environment setup works and the intended behavior is reproducible in the test environment
• In-code documentation and comments are up-to-date.
• Check: Are there specifications? Are they satisfied?

For further good practices have a look at our review guidelines.

assigned to @florian

added 1 commit

• 15ac87c5 - WIP: Add `empty_diff` function to apiutils

Compare with previous version

added 2 commits

• 31c5e197 - TST: Extend merge-bug test
• 2e7f0581 - ENH: Allow entity comparisons with inspection of referenced records

Compare with previous version

added 1 commit

• f63aa30f - DOC: Update changelog

Compare with previous version

changed the description

marked the checklist item Reference related issues as completed

marked the checklist item Up-to-date CHANGELOG.md (or not necessary) as completed

marked the checklist item Annotations in code (Gitlab comments) as completed

marked the checklist item All automated tests pass as completed

requested review from @salexan

marked the checklist item I understand the intent of this MR as completed

@florian I added some comments, but apart from that everything looks fine and this can be merged.

marked the checklist item All automated tests pass as completed

marked the checklist item Up-to-date CHANGELOG.md (or not necessary) as completed

marked the checklist item The test environment setup works and the intended behavior is reproducible in the test as completed

marked the checklist item In-code documentation and comments are up-to-date. as completed

marked the checklist item Check: Are there specifications? Are they satisfied? as completed

added 1 commit

• 59195096 - DOC: Clarify docstrings, remove print statements

Compare with previous version

@salexan I addressed your comments; please check the responses to the two unresolved threads and merge if you agree.

added 1 commit

• f85dc20e - DOC: added note about the possibility of mixed cases

Compare with previous version

resolved all threads

enabled an automatic merge when the pipeline for f85dc20e succeeds

mentioned in commit 58677097

merged