if we merge duplicate form fields, what actually happen? What other impacts we need to know? How does it affect existing forms? I am not able to find any documentation on that. It would be helpful to have such so that implementers know what it is about and whether they should merge duplicate form fields.
its required by this ticket >https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/TRUNK-3864
The ticket points to an old (broken) link of a thread discussing the issue - this appears to be that same discussion. Reading through the thread, it seems as if things have not changed, apart from the location of the code (i.e. it’s no longer in openmrs/admin/forms/auditField.form).
Scanning the mergeDuplicateFields() and fieldsAreSimilar() methods in core, it looks like this will find duplicate/similar fields in a form, delete one (the duplicate) and then reference the consolidated field in the form.
thx @danfuterman it was helpful