In https://code.launchpad.net/~gagern/bzr/bug513322-first/+merge/22045 I had requested a merge into bzr.dev involving a modification to the NEWS file. As the launchpad merge display showed a merge conflict, I assumed that the merge would be unsuitable for automatic merging by PQM. Later Robert Collins noted that a properly configured news_merge plugin would take care of such issues, and I assume he wanted to imply that PQM is using that plugin as well.
In that case, it would be great if launchpad could make use of it as well, i.e. if the plugin could be configured in the same way for both the qpm merge and the launchpad merge preview.
I assume that this might be difficult to configure right now, because the plugin is configured using the branch configuration file. Maybe things would be better if the configuration were moved to a versioned file inside .bzrmeta? That way, the same rules would apply to all clones of a branch. I'll therefore mark this as affecting bzr as well as launchpad bzr integration.
John A Meinel indicated that the PQM setup employed by bzr probably doesn't use the plugin either.
So this bug here is affecting bzr in a number of ways:
1. news_merge plugin source code: make it use a versioned configuration file
2. bzr source tree metadata: add a suitable configuration so the bzr NEWS file is handled by the plugin
3. bzr pqm administration: ensure that PQM uses the plugin and its (now hopefully versioned) configuration