From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff King Subject: Re: [1.8.0] reorganize the mess that the source tree has become Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:12:11 -0500 Message-ID: <20110131231210.GD14419@sigill.intra.peff.net> References: <7vzkqh8vqw.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> <7vwrll57ha.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> <20110131210045.GB14419@sigill.intra.peff.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Cc: Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org To: Nicolas Pitre X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Tue Feb 01 00:12:48 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Pk2v3-0007Es-G4 for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:12:25 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754302Ab1AaXMR (ORCPT ); Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:12:17 -0500 Received: from xen6.gtisc.gatech.edu ([143.215.130.70]:50012 "EHLO peff.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752824Ab1AaXMQ (ORCPT ); Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:12:16 -0500 Received: (qmail 14610 invoked by uid 111); 31 Jan 2011 23:12:15 -0000 Received: from 99-108-226-0.lightspeed.iplsin.sbcglobal.net (HELO sigill.intra.peff.net) (99.108.226.0) (smtp-auth username relayok, mechanism cram-md5) by peff.net (qpsmtpd/0.40) with ESMTPA; Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:12:15 +0000 Received: by sigill.intra.peff.net (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:12:11 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 04:28:49PM -0500, Nicolas Pitre wrote: > > Besides being just one more directory to go up and down, it does make > > history browsing more annoying. As much as I love git's "don't record > > renames" philosophy, our handling of renames on the viewing side is > > often annoying. I already get annoyed sometimes following stuff across > > the s!builtin-!builtin/! change. This would be like that but more so. > > So... we do suck at something? So why not take this opportunity to > shake yourself out of this easy comfort and improve Git as a result on > both front? :-) Yes, we do suck at rename following. The problem is that it is partially an implementation issue, and partially a fundamental issue. Obviously --follow sucks pretty hard right now, and that could be fixed. Namely it follows only a single file, and it interacts very badly with history simplification. But even with those things fixed, there will still be annoyances. It will still be _slower_ to turn it on all the time, for one[1]. And that's due to fundamental design decisions of the git data structure. And I'm not knocking those decisions; I think they made the right tradeoff. But that doesn't mean we don't pay the cost for that tradeoff. And no matter what your model, renames can be annoying. On-going topics will have a painful rebase or merge. And people looking at history will have to deal with the code-base having different names at different points. Yeah, you can say it's all just "content", but the filenames we put things in are actually useful. So I don't think it's wrong to say "renames are a pain, and so should not be done lightly". I do think it's wrong to say "renames can't be done"; I just the cost needs to be considered. -Peff [1] I'd be interested to see how much we can get around that slowness using a notes-cache.