Re: Merging limitations after directory renames -- interesting test repo

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 4:26 PM, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

Btw, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that the "estimate_similarity()" part of the patch is correct, or at least better than what we used to have.

If we have a file that expanded from 100 lines to 200 lines, and all of the old contents are there, then I think that logically people would expect it to be a "50% similarity".

But the thing is, with the old code, we would look at the old smaller size (100 lines), and take 50% of that. And then when the delta (also 100 lines) is bigger than that 50%, then we'd totally dismiss that thing from similarity analysis, because it obviously isn't similar enough.

So using the bigger size as the basis (and taking 50% of _that_ and comparing it to the delta) is probably the sane thing to do.

The rest of the patch I still think is total crap. The _intention_ is good, but the patch was written to be small rather than the right way of doing things.

                          Linus