Subject: Re: [PATCH] Fix some doubled word typos

From: Alp Toker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 01:32:31 +0100

Alp Toker wrote:
> Signed-off-by: Alp Toker <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  Documentation/git-svn.txt |    2 +-
>  Documentation/urls.txt    |    2 +-
>  2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

My patch was made against the 'next' branch, where the file had recently 
been moved to Documentation/git-svn.txt, but it was applied to the 
'master' branch where the file still exists at 
contrib/git-svn/git-svn.txt as it has not yet been moved.

As a result, it seems that only the modification to 
Documentation/urls.txt in this patch made it into the repository, with 
the fix to Documentation/git-svn.txt having been silently omitted.

By the time the commit was merged from 'master' to 'next', it had 
permanently lost the modification to git-svn.txt, and even though the 
commit message claims to "Fix some doubled word typos" it only fixes one.

Could this situation have been avoided if the patch had mentioned that 
it was against the 'next' branch? Should/does git warn the user if a 
patch modifies files that don't exist? Would rename tracking have helped 
this patch to apply properly?