Re: Adding Git to Better SCM Initiative : Comparison

From: Dmitry Potapov <dpotapov@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 14, 2008, 00:14 UTC
Message-ID: <20080114001408.GV2963@dpotapov.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <200801130144.14574.jnareb@gmail.com>

On Sun, Jan 13, 2008 at 01:44:10AM +0100, Jakub Narebski wrote:

> 
> What does "Renames Support" mean?

Accordingly to the clarification provided there, it means retaining the history of the file when its name changed. So I would write like this:

Yes. Git can automatically detects renames and show history together, however being content oriented rather than file oriented, the notion of "retaining the history of the file" can not exactly applied to it.

> Because the answer,
> especially in the case of git which is a bit different in that it does
> rename detection and not rename tracking (using inodes / file-ids),
> depends on that...

Git is different in that it tracks the content as the whole rather than tracking a set of files. When you look at some source code, what you really want to know who and why wrote *this*, and usually it does not matter to you whether it was written in this file or another one. CVS is really bad at that, because if you renamed a file, it would be very difficult to go back to history and find that. Many file-ids based SCMs have solved this problem, however, they do not do any better than CVS in another very common case -- when your code is moved around as result of refactoring, but Git addresses both problems, not just one!

So, it is not as much about explicit renaming vs automatic, but about different design goals. After finishing reading this questionnaire, it seems to me that a more proper title for it would be "Better CVS Initiative", so it is not surprisingly that Git does not fit into it well. It is like trying to put characteristics of your LCD into a questionnaire for CRT monitors -- some does not make sense, other misleading, and most important ones are not mentioned anyway...

Dmitry