threads / discuss / 17000

git documentation

Subject: git documentation

## tl;dr

3 messages between Jan 6, 2009 and Jan 6, 2009.

replies: 2people: 3as markdown or json

david@lang.hm· Jan 6, 2009, 01:46 UTC · lore

on lwn there is a comment (under the GNOME survey topic) http://lwn.net/Articles/313435/

The Shlomi Fish "Better SCM" site for example is very clear that Git won't do a merge across a rename. It even has a citation for this claim. But as a Git user who has actually done a merge across a rename I know it works just fine, and anyone familiar with Git's internals will guess immediately why. Yet probably there is no line of documentation on the Git site or elsewhere that I can quote to justify adding a "Yes" to the comparison.

sounds like a missing piece of documentation that someone should be able to fill in fairly easily.

David Lang

Jakub Narebski· Jan 6, 2009, 01:07 UTC · re: david@lang.hm · lore

Re: git documentation

David Lang <david@lang.hm> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On lwn there is a comment (under the GNOME survey topic)
> http://lwn.net/Articles/313435/
> 
> The Shlomi Fish "Better SCM" site for example is very clear that Git
> won't do a merge across a rename. It even has a citation for this
> claim. But as a Git user who has actually done a merge across a rename
> I know it works just fine, and anyone familiar with Git's internals
> will guess immediately why. Yet probably there is no line of
> documentation on the Git site or elsewhere that I can quote to justify
> adding a "Yes" to the comparison.

I have tried to add info about Git to Better SCM quite a long time ago; it was finally added by (IIRC) Alexey Mahotkin for http://versioncontrolblog.com and sent for inclusion in Better SCM to Shlomi Fish.

Unfortunately it contains some factual errors. I have sent corrections
to Alexey, but didn't finish it:
  "Git at Better SCM Initiative comparison of VCS (long)"
  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/97253
(see also other posts in this thread, and other posts with the same,
or similar, subject on git mailing list).

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git

Miklos Vajna· Jan 6, 2009, 01:46 UTC · re: david@lang.hm · lore

Re: git documentation

On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 05:46:56PM -0800, david@lang.hm wrote:

> why. Yet probably there is no line of documentation on the Git site or 
> elsewhere that I can quote to justify adding a "Yes" to the comparison.

I think it's documented in Documentation/merge-strategies.txt, under the 'recursive' merge strategy:

"Additionally this can detect and handle merges involving renames."