From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Paul Jackson Subject: Re: another perspective on renames. Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:16:26 -0700 Organization: SGI Message-ID: <20050414221626.10c6c0e7.pj@engr.sgi.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Apr 15 07:13:38 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([12.107.209.244]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DMJ8q-0008O2-DU for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Fri, 15 Apr 2005 07:13:20 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261706AbVDOFQp (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:16:45 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261710AbVDOFQp (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:16:45 -0400 Received: from omx3-ext.sgi.com ([192.48.171.20]:19687 "EHLO omx3.sgi.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261706AbVDOFQn (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:16:43 -0400 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by omx3.sgi.com (8.12.11/8.12.9/linux-outbound_gateway-1.1) with ESMTP id j3F5dkTd011182; Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:39:46 -0700 Received: from vpn2 (mtv-vpn-hw-pj-2.corp.sgi.com [134.15.25.219]) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (SGI-8.12.5/8.12.5) with SMTP id j3F5GUlU14700494; Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:16:31 -0700 (PDT) To: "C. Scott Ananian" In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 1.0.0 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Scott wrote: > Anyway, maybe it's worth thinking a little about an SCM in which this is a > feature, instead of (or in addition to) automatically assuming this is a > bug we need to add infrastructure to work around. Agreed. To me, the main purpose in tracking renames is to obtain a deeper history of the line-by-line changes in a file. ==> But that doesn't seem relevant here. Last I looked, git has no such history. A given file contents is the indivisable atom of the git world, with no fine structure. This is quite unlike classic SCM's, built on file formats that track source lines, not files, as the atomic unit. To me, rename is a special case of the more general case of a big chunk of code (a portion of a file) that was in one place either being moved or copied to another place. I wonder if there might be someway to use the tools that biologists use to analyze DNA sequences, to track the evolution of source code, identifying things like common chunks of code that differ in just a few mutations, and presenting the history of the evolution, at selectable levels of detail. -- I won't rest till it's the best ... Programmer, Linux Scalability Paul Jackson 1.650.933.1373, 1.925.600.0401