How can I stop the cart from combining BasketItems?

[SteveHiner]

Due to the way we do pricing on our site I have a need to prevent the cart and minicart from combining the items added to it.

If a user adds 100 of Item #1 to the cart then adds 500 more I want to have two separate line items in the cart.

I tried making a minor mod to the BasketItem by adding a custom field. I thought maybe they wouldn't be combined if they had different custom field values but it still blended them into the same entry and summed up the quantities.

Is there a property I can change on BasketItem that would let the cart know they should be considered differently but wouldn't hurt other things. For instance, I don't want to change the SKU, name, price or anything that would have a lasting effect. That's why I tried to do it with a custom field - I don't use them for items in the cart so I don't care what they are set to.

Any suggestions?

[jmestep]

I think it will not combine them with a customer template field and you could hide that.

[SteveHiner]

I didn't see a way to add a customer template to a BasketItem. What I did find is the GiftMessage and LineMessage properties. By setting those to a random text string it will keep items separate in the cart, just like I want it. I will likely settle on GiftMessage long term because gifts don't make any sense for the store I'm working on and I've already been removing references to gifts. I wish there was a checkbox in the admin to disable gifts. Then again, there's a lot I wish was in the admin - like a way to disable wishlists for the whole site.