Re: blame follows renames, but log doesn't

From: Steven Grimm <koreth@midwinter.com>
Date: Jun 19, 2007, 09:54 UTC
Message-ID: <4677A7EF.500@midwinter.com>
In-Reply-To: <20070619071916.GC9177@thunk.org>

Theodore Tso wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Actually, the bigger missing gap is merges.  Suppose in the
> development branch, you rename a whole bunch of files.  (For example,
> foo_super.c got moved to foo/super.c, foo_inode.c got moved to
> foo/inode.c, etc.)
>
> Now suppose there are fixes made in the stable branch, in the original
> foo_super.c and foo_inode.c files.  Ideally you would want to be able
> to pull those changes into the development branch, where the files
> have new names, and have the changes be applied to foo/super.c and
> foo/inode.c in the development branch.
>

I believe git handles this case already, actually. I've seen this work just fine many times.

What git doesn't handle, but BitKeeper does, is applying directory renames to newly created files. I rename the "lib" directory to "util", you create a new file lib/strings.c and update lib/Makefile to compile it. I pull from you. Under BitKeeper, I will get util/strings.c and the change will be applied to my util/Makefile. git will create a brand-new "lib" directory containing nothing but the new file, but since the Makefile existed before, it will (correctly) apply your change to my util/Makefile, which will then break my build because it will refer to a file that doesn't exist in the Makefile's directory.

This has bitten me a few times in real life, e.g. in cases where I'm importing a third-party source tarfile and reorganizing it a little to fit it into my local build system. Every time they add a new source file, I have to go manually clean up after it rather than just merging the vendor branch into mine like I can do when they don't add anything. It is not frequent enough to be a major hassle for me but it sure is annoying when it happens (especially since sometimes the build *doesn't* break and it takes a while to notice a newly created file isn't where it should be.)

-Steve