Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@xxxxxxx> wrote: > linux@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: >> "Rename support" is a kludge to make a fundamentally broken model >> less painful. > > It's not. > > Git _has_ rename support. Look into the code, you'll find some code > whose purpose is to manage renames. And _no_, rename support is not > just a direct consequence of commits being atomic. > > Atomic commit help, but if you do nothing else, moving a file and then > trying to merge will fail for example. So, in addition to atomic > commits, you have at least 3 options : explicit file ID (bzr), > recording renames (hg), or detecting renames after-the-fact (git). Please forgive me for not mentioning that part. Yes, there are interesting things to do with renames, and git is doing them, but I skipped over them because they don't have much to do with the better-scm definition of the feature: "Does the system support moving a file or directory to a different location while still retaining the history of the file?" You can try to interpret it so it makes sense, but the question is basically assuming that the history is attached to the file rather than that the file is attached to the history. With the latter model, the question is almost silly. Even with the very primitive version of git that Linus used to make v2.6.12-rc2 with none of that fancy code, you can rename a file and git retains the history. Period. The qualification "of the file" doesn't even make sense. As Linus has observed in the past, git does lots of fancy stuff to follow the history of the code that's *in* the file, but the idea is that a file, per se, doesn't have a history or even an identity. You can ask about the history of a file *name*, or of a file's *contents*, but if not that, what exactly is this "file" thing you want the history of? Once you've answered that, you can then figure out if the answer to the question based on whether the file has a history to retain in the first place. There are interesting questions about renames that you could ask, but better-scm isn't asking questions like "can you resolve merges properly after renaming a file on one branch?" Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I can't help but read the question as asking if the system has a workaround for a well-known CVS problem. And one honest answer is "no, there's no workaround; git doesn't suffer from the problem in the first place." - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
