Subject: Re: [BUG] git-log: tracking deleted file in a repository with multiple "initial commit" histories

From: Brian Norris <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 13:24:29 -0800

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 03:45:57PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
> See the section on History Simplification in git-log. But basically,
> when you specify a pathspec, git does not traverse side branches that
> had no effect on the given pathspec.

Thanks for the pointer. Is this done primarily for performance reasons,
or for UI simplicity (e.g., to avoid some kinds of double-counting)?
Seems like it generates unintuitive behaviors, but if it's helping block
other unintuitive behaviors, then maybe it can't be resolved easily.

FWIW, I quite often use git-log to look at the history of a deleted
file. Seems like a pretty big hole if the default behavior is going to
prune away the entire history of the file.

[...]

> If you want to see the full history, you can with "--full-history"
> (there are some other simplification possibilities, but I don't think
> any of them are interesting for your particular case).

--full-history gives me what I want (I'll admit, I didn't read through
all the other "History Simplification" documentation). Can I make this
the default somehow?

Brian