Re: [ANNOUNCE] Example Cogito Addon - cogito-bundle

On 10/20/06, Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] wrote:

So yeah, I've seen a few strange cases myself, but they've actually been
interesting. Like seeing how much of a file was just a copyright license,
and then a file being considered a "copy" just because it didn't actually
introduce any real new code.

It may be worth doing something special for licenses. Logs of small
Mozilla files are also getting tripped up by the large copyright
notices. The notices take up a lot of space too. The Mozilla license
has been changed five times. That is 110,000 files times one to five
licenses at 800-1500 characters each. 500MB+ of junk before
compression.

You could have a file of macro substitutions that is applied/expanded
when files go in/out of git. The macros would replace the copyright
notices improving the move/rename tracking and the reducing repository
size. The macros could be recorded out of band to eliminate the need
for escaping the file contents. Even simpler, the only valid place for
the macro could be the beginning of the file.

-- 
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl@gmail.com