Re: Handling renames.
- From
Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>
- Date
- Oct 22, 2005, 01:51 UTC
- Message-ID
- <20051022015109.GO30889@pasky.or.cz>
- In-Reply-To
- <Pine.LNX.4.64.0510211826350.10477@g5.osdl.org>
> Every single thing that said that renames were a bad idea to track > when git started is still equally true.
It'd be good to clarify whether we discuss whether the idea of tracking renames is good or bad, or whether having the user explicitly specify renames is better than figuring that out automagically. Your first comment would indicate the former, but the rest of your reply the latter.
> You can follow renames _afterwards_.
I can - crudely, but what's the point, if the user is dying to give me the information.
> Git tracks contents. And I think we've proven that figuring out renames > after-the-fact from those contents is not only doable, but very well > supported already.
It's unreliable and it's slow (well, perhaps I should get some numbers to back that out, but given how it is done I take it for granted). Does not sound too "very well" to me.
> I'm convinced that git handles renames better than any other SCM ever. > Exactly because we figure it out when it matters.
It matters at least every time you show per-file history and every time you merge cross the rename. I think that can be both pretty common if you ever do the rename. That means you can do an expensive guess every time you hit that, and the guess can get it wrong, in which case there is no way around that and you lose.
-- Petr "Pasky" Baudis Stuff: http://pasky.or.cz/ VI has two modes: the one in which it beeps and the one in which it doesn't.