Re: Am able to delete a file with no trace in the log

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Jun 3, 2009, 22:47 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.01.0906031544170.4880@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <7vmy8p54fr.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:
> 
> > For example, right now there is _no_ way to get even a "show diff relative 
> > to first parent". You can do "-m", which will show it relative to _both_ 
> > parents, but nobody ever wants that. And you can do "-c" or "--cc", but 
> > that simplifies away all the paths that match in one. 
> 
> Actually for that "Where did my file 'x' go across the merge chain", I was
> going to suggest something like
> 
> 	git log --simplify-merges -m --raw -- x

Ok. Not very readable, but it's certainly getting closer.

Show 13 quoted lines

> > So here's a challenge: in the git repository, get a nice view of what your 
> > merges looked like. The closest I can get is
> >
> > 	git log -c --stat --grep="Merge branch '"
> >
> > which is actually very non-intuitive ("-c" on its own gives no useful 
> > output, but "-c --stat" gives nice diffstat against the first parent, 
> > which in this case is what we want).
> 
> I think the logical place to hook that into is the --first-parent option.
> 
> I actually have very hard resisted so far the temptation to do so because
> your mantra has always been "in a merge, all parents are equal."

Oh, I agree. The challenge was just the first step - how to make it do merges in general sanely would be the issue.

Because if you do just --first-parent, then that won't even show the test-case that Graham actually had - because the missing file didn't come in from the first parent of a merge.

The challenge was mainly as a way to point out that even some fairly simple cases aren't all that simple.

		Linus