Re: Directory renames without breaking git log.

[Tarmigan <tarmigan+git@gmail.com>]

(you're probably better off asking on the whole list, as I don't know much)

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 11:53 PM, Kai Blin <kai@samba.org> wrote:
> On Thursday 04 September 2008 02:16:24 you wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Kai Blin <kai@samba.org> wrote:
>> > Unfortunately, the directories are big enough that git log stops to track
>> > the renamed files, so e.g. git log ./samba3 does not show the samba3
>> > history. The history is not lost, of course, but it's way less intuitive
>> > to get it.
>>
>> You can try setting diff.renamelimit to 0 in your ~/.gitconfig.  See
>> Linus's email here for a similar situation in the kernel:
>> http://lwn.net/Articles/292948/
>
> That doesn't seem to fix "git log path/to/file" cases. The really interesting
> part is that if I try git log --follow -M -C path/to/file, I don't get any
> history at all. (--follow is the culprit, if I remove that I at least get the
> merge commit)

OK, I actually tried with your example, and see what you mean.  It
looks like follow does not work with this case.  See
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/85766
for an illustration of --follow not working with the subtree merge
strategy, which as far as I can tell is pretty much the same as this
case.  Also it sounds like follow only works with single files, and
not directories:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2008/5/4/1714694

Why these do not work is way beyond my git knowledge.  As far as I
know (which is very little), follow could work for these cases, but it
currently does not.

> git blame still works, and git log --sparse path/to/file works, of
> course. --sparse makes giving a path a bit pointless, of course, but we
> probably can live with that for time being. I'm still open for suggestions,
> of course. :)

Glad that git blame works.  If you haven't already, you should also
try git gui blame too for better interactivity.

Thanks,
Tarmigan