Re: [PATCH] Support wholesale directory renames in fast-import

> Some source material (e.g. Subversion dump files) perform directory
> renames without telling us exactly which files in that subdirectory
> were moved.  This makes it hard for a frontend to convert such data
> formats to a fast-import stream, as all the frontend has on hand
> is "Rename a/ to b/" with no details about what files are in a/,
> unless the frontend also kept track of all files.
>
> The new 'R' subcommand within a commit allows the frontend to
> rename either a file or an entire subdirectory, without needing to
> know the object's SHA-1 or the specific files contained within it.
> The rename is performed as efficiently as possible internally,
> making it cheaper than a 'D'/'M' pair for a file rename.
>
> Signed-off-by: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
> ---
>
>  David Frech <david@nimblemachines.com> wrote:
>  > Git can track file renames implicitly. If I delete and then add (under
>  > a different name) the same content, git will figure that out.
>  >
>  > But if a directory was renamed, I have no way to tell fast-import
>  > about it. I can't delete the directory (using a 'D' command) and then
>  > add it back (with a different name) with all its contents, because my
>  > source material (an svn dump file) doesn't tell me, at that point,
>  > about all the files involved because nothing about them has changed.
>  >
>  > fast-import knows about the contents of the directory I want to
>  > rename, but doesn't give me a primitive to do the rename. Is this
>  > something we need to add? My frontend could keep track of this, but I
>  > would duplicating work that fast-import is already doing.
>
>  Does the following do the trick for you?  It is also available
>  from my fastimport.git master branch:
>
>         git://repo.or.cz/git/fastimport.git      master
>         http://repo.or.cz/r/git/fastimport.git   master
>
>  Yes, it passes all tests...
>