From: Philip Oakley Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2017 21:48:46 GMT Subject: Re: [idea] File history tracking hints Message-ID: In-Reply-To: From: "Pavel Kretov" > Hi all, > > Excuse me if the topic I'm going to raise here has been already discussed > on the mailing list, forums, or IRC, but I couldn't find anything related. > > > The problem: > > Git, being "a stupid content tracker", doesn't try to keep an eye on > operations which happens to individual files; things like file renames > aren't recorded during commit, but heuristically detected later. > > Unfortunately, the heuristic can only deal with simple file renames with > no substantial content changes; it's helpless when you: > > - rename file and change it's content significantly; > - split single file into several files; > - merge several files into another; > - copy entire file from another commit, and do other things like these. > > However, if we're able to preserve this information, it's possible > not only to do more accurate 'git blame', but also merge revisions with > fewer conflicts. > > > The proposal: > > The idea is to let user give hints about what was changed during > the commit. For example, if user did a rename which wasn't automatically > detected, he would append something like the following to his commit > message: > > Tracking-hints: rename dev-vcs/git/git-1.0.ebuild -> > dev-vcs/git/git-2.0.ebuild > > or (if full paths of affected files can be unambiguously omitted): > > Tracking-hints: rename git-1.0.ebuild -> git-2.0.ebuild > > There may be other hint types: > > Tracking-hint: recreate LICENSE.txt > Tracking-hint: split main.c -> main.c cmdline.c > Tracking-hint: merge linalg.py <- vector.py matrix.py > > or even something like this: > > Tracking-hint: copy json.py <- > libs/json.py@4db88291251151d8c5c8e4f20430fa4def2cb2ed > > If file transformation cannot be described by a single tracking hint, it > shall > be possible to specify a sequence of hints at once: > > Tracking-hint: > split Utils.java -> AppHelpers.java StringHelpers.java > recreate Utils.java > > Note that in the above example the order of operations really matters, so > both lines have to reside in one 'Tracking-hint' block. > > * * * > > How do you think, is this idea worth implementing? > Any other thoughts on this? > > -- Pavel Kretov. Maybe use the "interpret-trailers" methods for standardising your hints locally (in your team / workplace) to see how it goes and flesh out what works and what doesn't. Trying to decide, a-priori, what are the right hints is likely to be the hard part. -- Philip