Because etc-update wants a merge client to distinguish between source1, source2 and merge destination, most of the existing merge clients are not suitable to use with etc-update. Kompare and vim for example can not be used. As far as I know, sdiff is the only merge client that works with etc-update and I find his interface really poor. I'll patch kompare so that it can work with etc-update but I think it would be wise to consider making etc-update more versatile. As a first step, it should be possible using last modification time checks and stuff like that to know if a file has been merged by the merge client without relying on a third merged file.
not helpful. try dispatch-conf