Re: merge renamed files/directories? (was: Re: detecting rename->commit->modify->commit)

From: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Date: May 3, 2008, 18:11 UTC
Message-ID: <32541b130805031111r4cbea8e1l19c34ac05016a89b@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <481CA742.4080909@tikalk.com>

On 5/3/08, Ittay Dror <ittayd@tikalk.com> wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Can someone comment whether supporting merges after renames will be on the
> Git roadmap?
>
>  As a Java developer, I can say that refactoring of class names and packages
> happens quite often. Having to remember I've made this change throughout the
> lifetime of a branch (or master, until pushed to a central repository), and
> needing to manually merge changes to files / packages (directories) I've
> refactored is something that I want my VCS to do.

Git already works fine for renames. The only situation where something funny happens is if you rename a whole directory and someone else creates a file in the old directory. (In that case, the new file ends up in the old place instead of the new place.) However, even in that case, there is still no conflict and no manual merging necessary.

In fact, as someone else pointed out, renaming a java file requires you to modify the file anyhow, so having git auto-move the file to another directory *still* wouldn't make it work any better.

Have fun,

Avery