Re: Rename handling

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 
> That is a particularly bad example: you are not renaming files in that 
> example!

Well, yes and no.

I would actually say that it si a particularly *good* example.

With git, you can actually record renames exactly this way: you just need 
to make sure that you don't change the content, and you make it two 
independent commits.

That is in fact how some systems that support "explicit renames" actually 
do it: the rename is literally a separate option, and cannot necessarily 
go together with other actions (in particular, several file-ID-following 
systems do not allow "cross-renames" in the same commit, for example, and 
you actually have to do them as two separate commits).

Git *allows* you to do renames with changes. In fact, I'd normally 
encourage it. But it doesn't force it, and then renames are totally 
unambiguos except for the case where you simply have the *same*file* in 
multiple places, and you remove or add multiple copies (again, you can do 
that unambiguously too, if you limit it to *one* such rename per commit)

		Linus