Re: [WIP PATCH] fast-export: emit deletions first

From: Raymond E. Pasco <ray@ameretat.dev>
Date: Apr 7, 2026, 01:12 UTC
Message-ID: <k3qg4jodn425cjvorvdl4j24ik7c4jwmwudwsowe4doth7devn@f5xbrskansmj>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqo6jwau34.fsf@gitster.g>

On 26/04/06 10:15AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> In any case, it is a bit surprising that fast-export survived this
> long without having encountering the problem you are solving.  I
> wonder if fast-import handles such an output with some smart to
> avoid the issue?

I was surprised too. The case where this was encountered was a repo that had a directory symlink, and promoted it to a real directory, but the symlink turned out to be a red herring, it's purely path prefixes.

fast-import itself just does things in the order given; you might rename with copy followed by delete (though 'R'ename was added at some point). It's on the stream author for this to make sense; fast-export doesn't use this pattern.