Re: Not understanding with git wants to copy one file to another

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 1:41 PM, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
>> Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:
>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Ah. Sorry for confusing even more.
>>> By pointing out the options for git-diff, I just wanted to point out that
>>> such a mechanism ("rename/copy detection") exists.
>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>> What am I missing?
>>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/3ogkk1/beginner_disable_rename_detection/
>>>
>>> "Rename detection is just GUI sugar".
>>
>> Thanks there is a nice full explanation at the cited url.
>>
>> What is still a bit puzzling is that in that same commit, there are
>> files that are true copies of each other, just in different locations,
>> But nothing pops up about them in a git commit.
>>
>
> The heuristic to find the renames/copies only looks at modified files
> to be fast(, the assumption is that each commit only touches few
> files, but the project consists of a lot of files).
>
> For that git-diff knows about '--find-copies-harder' that looks at
> all files even those not modified. This would point out the true
> copies, I would assume.
>
> I don't think we'd want to include the '--find-copies-harder' flag
> to status or commit, as it may take some time in large projects.

Yeah, thanks for helping in this discussion.