blame follows renames, but log doesn't

["Martin Langhoff" <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

when I show git to newbies or demo it to people using other SCMs, and
we get to the rename part of the conversation, I discuss and show how
GIT's approach is significantly better than explicit recording of
renames.

One great example is git-blame -- actually more spectacular with the
recent git gui blame improvements. But git-log still doesn't do it.

If I say
   git blame git-cvsimport.perl  # goes to the true origin like a champ
   git log git-cvsimport.perl # stops at the Big Tool Rename

In thread in May Linus posted a PoC patch to get git-blame to do it
http://marc.info/?l=git&m=117347893211567&w=2 , and outlined the
reasons why it'd be wrong to try to do that in git-log -- but it
didn't come to happen :-/

cg-log used to have some Perl logic that could do this -- it didn't
always work, but I'm sometimes tempted to go back to it, and review
it.

Linus said:
> But it's an example of the fact that yes, git can do this, but we're so
> stupid that we don't really accept it.

And I'm sure people can cope with git blame --log path/to/file and we
can add a note to git-log manpage about renames being reported by
blame instead.

And I kind of hate having to reply to things like these

    http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/125


cheers


martin