Re: git log -M -- filename is not working?

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: May 7, 2010, 20:28 UTC
Message-ID: <m3ocgre9ul.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <19428.24021.324557.517627@winooski.ccs.neu.edu>

Eli Barzilay <eli@barzilay.org> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On May  7, Eugene Sajine wrote:
> > On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:10 PM, Jacob Helwig <jacob.helwig@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > You want the --follow flag, too.
> > 
> > Thanks! I missed this guy. By the way it seems that --follow flag
> > works without -M or -C.
> > 
> > Are those deprecated or I'm missing the difference between three of
> > them??
> 
> BTW, I've had at least 4 people now who got confused by this.  Is
> there any use for -M/-C without --follow?  In any case, it will be
> very helpful if the -M/-C descriptions said "see also --follow".

Yes, '-M/-C' is useful with "git diff" _without_ pathspec, including e.g. "git show -C".

The problem with "git log -M -- <filename>" is that history simplification, which is required for good performance, happens before diff mechanism has a chance to perform rename detection. Before there was '--follow' option to git-log (which supports only the case of single file, and doesn't work that well with more complicated history), you were forced to do

  $ git log -M -- <filename> <oldname> <oldername>...

> 
> Also, is there a way to set this as the default for `git log'?

I don't think so. Note also that '--follow' works only with single file, and does not work for example (currently) with directory pathspec.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git