Re: [PATCH] t4202 (log): add failing test for log with subtree

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 22, 2013, 19:09 UTC
Message-ID: <7v7gjupekk.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CALkWK0madWxOSraZw6u8U_afVeK8tyMB_+D59n1vSBmobxGqqg@mail.gmail.com>

Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> [...]
>>  (3) When (1) notices that the path being followed did not exist in
>>      any of the parents (be it a merge or a non-merge) and finds a
>>      different path with a similar looking content, it _switches_
>>      the pathspec to it, but the single pathspec it uses is a global
>>      state and affects traversals of other ancestry paths at the
>>      same time.  Because of this, "--follow" will not work correctly
>>      in a history that contains merges.  It often _appears_ to work
>>      only by accident.
>
> This explanation is all very nice, but isn't it completely tangential
> to the issue at hand?

I think you are talking mostly about (2), but the primary purpose of my message was not about your specific issue.

It was to give a larger picture to people who may be inclined to tackle, and may be capable of tackling, the real issues in the "--follow" codepath. Anybody who wants to update it needs to be aware of all three.