When manually resolving directory conflicts isn't a feature

[Mary Gardiner]

I should add that I'm not really interested primarily in the question of "how
can I arrange my LaTeX files so as to avoid triggering this series of bugs?"
I've been triggering these bugs regularly since at least 2007: both in my
writing and my coding I am in the habit of creating new directories fairly
regularly, and apparently make use of directory hierachies more than many
people. Answers along the lines of "you don't need that many directories,
surely" don't seem appropriate somehow. The tool should allow me to create new
directories in branches and switch back and forth easily, and then my use of
directories is between me and whichever unfortunates have to work on my
codebase(s). The use case was supplied more as a concrete example of someone
having problems than as something needing debugging in and of itself.

-Mary