Subject: Re: What should a user expect from git log -M -- file

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:14:37 -0800 (PST)

Mike Hommey <[email-masked]> writes:

> I recently reorganized a project of mine, and the result is that a lot of
> files moved from the top directory to a sub directory.
> 
> Now, I innocently tried to 'git log -M' some of these files in the
> subdirectories, and well, the history just stops when the file was
> created. Obviously, if I put both the old and the new location it works,
> but shouldn't users expect 'git log -M -- file' to try to find the
> previous path and continue from there ?

What you want is not

  git log -M -- file

but

  git log --follow file

"git log -M -- file" IIRC first applies path limiting, simplifying
history, *then* does rename detection, and finally filters output
(unless --full-diff is used).

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git