From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:03:53 GMT
Subject: Re: import files w/ history
Message-ID: <20090310180353.GC26351@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <slrngr99ei.1t4t.csaba-ml@beastie.creo.hu>

On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 05:15:16AM +0000, Csaba Henk wrote:

> But I still had a hard time with it... Finally I realized that if I do
> filtering this way, I have to start filtering from the topmost commit
> which affects the given file.
> 
> If I just start from origin/HEAD (assuming that it's on a commit which
> does not affect the file), then it won't be found as a key of the mapping
> created by git-filter-branch (as it's ignored because rev-listing was
> narrowed down to the file), and therefore filter-branch finally punts
> with "WARNING: Ref '<sha1>' is unchanged". I don't know if it's an
> intended behaviour, or something which could/should be improved, or at
> least documented... seems to be some sort of POLS violation to me (at
> least I was surprised :) ).

I think passing path limiters to filter-branch is just something that
nobody ever really tried before. I think the solutions are, in order of
decreasing easiness and increasing difficulty:

  1. document the problem in Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt

  2. create a failing test for it in the test suite

  3. fix the failing test. ;)

Do you want to try a patch for one (or more!) of those?

-Peff