jemmyw wrote:
>
> Hi. Awhile ago I copied some files in my local repo then commited. In another
> commit I deleted the original files, so essentially I did a mv that git
> doesn't know about. Now I'm trying to merge from another branch where
> changes have happened to the files in their original locations, and it's
> making the merge somewhat difficult. Is there a way to ease this?
Git never "knows" about a move, it only detects them after the fact.
A corollary of this is that 'git mv a b' is more or less the same as
'cp a b; git rm a; git add b'.
Now since you have a copy followed by a removal in two separate
commits, the merge logic won't treat this as a rename. Some ideas for
possible solutions:
* If your cp&rm commits are strictly local, you could squash them into
a single commit. See man git-rebase(1), especially the -i flag.
That way, the merge logic will recognise it as a rename.
* You can use an extra line of history that has a "real" one-step mv.
Suppose you currently have
*---*---*---*---* upstream
\
\
+--C--o--R--o--o local
where C is the copy and R is the removal. Then you can introduce an
extra "gateway" branch that does just the move:
*---*---*---*---* upstream
|\
| \
| +--M gateway
|
\
\
+--C--o--R--o--o local
Now merge gateway to local (i.e. git checkout local && git merge
gateway), and resolve all resulting conflicts. I think you can
actually use '-s ours' in that merge, but be sure to check the
results.
*---*---*---*---* upstream
|\
| \
| +--M gateway
| \
\ +----------+
\ \
+--C--o--R--o--o--1 local
Finally, you can use the gateway branch to "do the rename" on all
incoming new changes, by first merging upstream to gateway and later
again gateway to local, like so:
*---*---*---*---*. upstream
|\ \
| \ \
| +--M-------------2 gateway
| \ \
\ +----------+ \
\ \ \
+--C--o--R--o--o--1--3 local
It won't be very pretty history, but it should only give (rename
related) merge conflicts at M.
HTH :-)
--
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch
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