gitk / diffcore-rename error message

Alf Clement· May 30, 2008, 15:54 UTC · lore

Hi all,

I was trying to create a git repository in the following way (while importing different releases from clearcase tree)

git init . tar xzf version1.. git add . git commit -a -m"Version1" rm -rf tree tar xzf version2 git add . git commit -a -m"Version2" ... and so on for next next verison.

Now I get the following error while using gitk:
warning: too many files, skipping inexact rename detection
warning: too many files, skipping inexact rename detection
    while executing
"close $bdf"
    (procedure "getblobdiffline" line
...

which seems to come out of diffcore-rename.c

Can I ignore it? Is it harmful?

Thanks, Alf

Jeff King· May 30, 2008, 23:10 UTC · re: Alf Clement · lore

Re: gitk / diffcore-rename error message

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 05:54:42PM +0200, Alf Clement wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Now I get the following error while using gitk:
> warning: too many files, skipping inexact rename detection
> warning: too many files, skipping inexact rename detection
>     while executing
> "close $bdf"
>     (procedure "getblobdiffline" line
> ...
> 
> which seems to come out of diffcore-rename.c
> 
> Can I ignore it? Is it harmful?

It isn't harmful. You had a big commit, and git decided it wasn't worth trying to do rename detection on such a big change (because it would likely take too much CPU time).

The upcoming version of git suppresses this message since it confuses gitk. So you can try upgrading to the most recent 'master' to fix it. In the meantime, you can either ignore it (though I think it may interfere with gitk showing the correct diff), or you can try setting the rename limit higher (try "git config diff.renamelimit 400").

-Peff