Subject: Re: VCS comparison table

From: Shawn Pearce <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:31:06 -0400

Aaron Bentley <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> >> You'll note we referred to that bevhavior on the page.  We don't think
> >> what Git does is the same as supporting renames.  AIUI, some Git users
> >> feel the same way.
> > 
> > Oh, we start another flamewar again?
> 
> I'd hope not.  It sounds as though you feel that supporting renames in
> the data representation is *wrong*, and therefore it should be an insult
> to you if we said that Git fully supported renames.

It would seem that the majority of folks on the Git list feel that
way, myself among them.  I don't know that we'd find it an insult
to say Git fully supports renames but I do think we have had better
results from *not* recording them and looking for them after the
fact with smart tools.

Junio's recent work with git-pickaxe (or whatever its name finally
settles out to be) is a perfect example of this.  Despite not having
"recorded renames" git-pickaxe is able to fairly accurately detect
blocks of code moving between files, of which renaming files is just
a special case.  This provides some fairly accurate blame reporting
pointing to exactly which commit/author/datetime put a given line
of code into the project.

No additional metadata required.  All existing repositories can
immediately benefit from the new tool.  Rather slick if you ask me.

-- 
Shawn.