Re: newbie questions about git design and features (some wrt hg)

Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Simon 'corecode' Schubert wrote:

quoted

quoted

So, can you explain to me how a filename is _not_ a file-id?

It is not a file-id like other SCM use it (I think monotone, not sure though).
If you copy/move the content to a new name, the ID will not stay the same.
Just see it as a hash bucket which allows you easy access to the history for a
file currently with this name.

Well, that's actually just another "file ID" too. It's just not an "inode 
number" kind of file ID, it's more the "CVS file ID" kind of ID.

SVN uses "inode numbers" (I think they are just UUID's generated at "svn 
add" time, but I'm not sure) to track file ID's across renames. Some other 
SCM's do the same.

I think you got this part confused with GNU Arch (and possibly
Bzr).  SVN tracks renames in the changeset, it records (in the log)
a copy and delete.  pathname@revision is the only "file ID" I know
about in SVN.

-- 
Eric Wong