Tip of the day: archaeology

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Dec 13, 2005, 21:16 UTC
Message-ID: <7vpso07l63.fsf_-_@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <861x0hxfn2.fsf@blue.stonehenge.com>

merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:

> I see now that grepping "gitignore" shows git-add.sh and
> git-status.sh.  gitignore is indeed doc'ed in git-add.txt, but not in
> git-status.txt.  Must've snuck in recently.  I'm trying to watch
> "git-whatchanged -p Documentation/*", but I miss things sometimes.

Let me grab this opportunity to demonstrate archaeology tools.

    $ git whatchanged --pretty=oneline \
      -S'--exclude-per-directory=.gitignore' git-status.sh

shows the "Big tool rename" commit 215a7ad on Sep 7th had it as 621fa49 blob, and we can see that the revision:

    $ git cat-file blob 621fa49 | grep -B2 gitignore
            git-ls-files --others \
                --exclude-from="$GIT_DIR/info/exclude" \
                --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore |

already had .gitignore support [*1*]. Looking at the big rename commit, we learn git-status.sh used to be called as git-status-script:

    $ git-diff-tree -r -M --name-status 215a7ad | grep status.sh
    R093	git-status-script	git-status.sh

Digging further with the old name reveals that it is this commit:

    $ git whatchanged --pretty=oneline \
      -S'--exclude-per-directory=.gitignore' git-status-script
    diff-tree ba966b9... (from 9804b7d...)
    Teach git-status-script about git-ls-files --others
    :100755 100755 1999a66... 1696f23... M	git-status-script
    $ git cat-file blob 1696f23 | grep gitignore
	    --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore |
    $ git cat-file blob 1999a66 | grep gitignore
    $ git log --max-count=1 ba966b9 | head -n 5
    commit ba966b957908248396402acd785d10ba1da07294
    Author: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
    Date:   Fri Aug 26 02:12:50 2005 -0700

        Teach git-status-script about git-ls-files --others

[Footnote]

*1* Sometimes I wish we had "cvs co -p" equivalent.

	$ git cat-blob rev path

Perhaps?