Re: Proper tracking of copies in git log and others

From: Sean Estabrooks <seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
Date: Jul 4, 2009, 18:31 UTC
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP94B7E43F5EE983A2F9BFA8AE2D0@phx.gbl>
In-Reply-To: <4A4F8258.5070701@trn.iki.fi>

On Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:24:56 +0300 Lasse Kärkkäinen <tronic+dfhy@trn.iki.fi> wrote:

> Getting full history of a file, including that beyond copies, is rather 
> important and apparently not currently supported by git tools.

[...]

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> It would be useful if the git tools could produce history like this with 
> all the tools (log, blame, gitk, etc), preferably with proper branching 
> guesses (guesses because there is no info on where the copy came from), 
> but even a linear history (sorted by commit time?) would do much better 
> than not having anything.

Lasse,

You're right, it appears that Git does not currently support what you are trying to do. However, if you were to run the command "git log -C -C --raw" on your test case, you would see that Git can actually detect the copies in question. The detection just isn't applied in the "follow" case.

There was a patch sent to the list in January that would have enabled the functionality you're asking about:

http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2009/1/22/4792454

Although it seems the author never followed up after Junio questioned one aspect of the patch. It wouldn't do _exactly_ as you requested though; intermediate copies are not shown, copies are linked back to the original.

You could apply that patch and test it out. Perhaps you could address Junio's concern or reignite some interest from the original author.

HTH, Sean