I'm trying to decide whether to repurpose the conflict detection in zope.configuration for non-XML configuration. zope.configuration has the following resolveConflicts function, which attempts to resolve action discriminator conflicts. def resolveConflicts(actions): """Resolve conflicting actions Given an actions list, identify and try to resolve conflicting actions. Actions conflict if they have the same non-null discriminator. Conflicting actions can be resolved if the include path of one of the actions is a prefix of the includepaths of the other conflicting actions and is unequal to the include paths in the other conflicting actions. ... """ The code in resolveConflicts indeed matches the docstring description. In the "test_simple.py" test file, a little more light is shed on conflict resolution: """Conflicting actions can be resolved if one of the conflicting actions is from a configuration file that directly or indirectly includes the files containing the other conflicting actions.""" There's also a test in test_xmlconfig.py that goes into details about includeOverrides and conflict detection. (Note that I don't care about includeOverrides here. I think I understand it, after some wrangling with it.) Unfortunately, the documentation in the code tends to explains the mechanics of conflict resolution, but not the intent. I'll take a guess though: - the "rootmost" directive that participates in a conflict is meant to "win". - if there is more than one "rootmost" directive that participates in a conflict, the conflict cannot be resolved. Does my summary sound about right? Does anyone have any insight as to why this particular conflict resolution strategy was chosen? I'm really just trying to understand the intent. - C