Re: [Arx-users] Linus on SCM and "rename" tracking

[Walter Landry]

Kevin Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> One topic that surprised me is that he is reluctant to add support for
> tracking file renames. At first, it seemed that he just didn't want that
> feature in the git core. But today he revealed that he actually believes
> that rename tracking is the wrong thing to do. I have pasted his message
> at the bottom for your enjoyment. It's long, but if you're interested in
> this stuff, it's well worth reading.
> 
> He really does seem to describe a powerful and cool SCM feature that
> would go beyond what I've seen anywhere so far.
> 
> Thoughts?

Linus argues against explicitly tracking renames because they can all
be inferred later on.  Since renames can be accompanied by significant
formatting and token replacement, that seems like a good way to make
rename tracking unreliable :(

For the particular use case that Linus mentioned (merging multiple
implementations into a single file), Linus' proposal would probably
not work at all, because each of the multiple implementations is
probably different in some way.

In any case, even if you did manage to figure it all out, you could
still layer it on top of any SCM.  That is no reason to make simple
renames unreliable.

Cheers,
Walter