Re: Proposal: tell git a file has been renamed

On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 3:15 AM Jeremy Morton [off-list ref] wrote:

On 24/04/2023 02:43, Chris Torek wrote:

quoted

... Alternatively, we could have a
command -- similar to `git commit --only` in effect

I'm not sure what the utility of the --only thing would be - to detect
renames that didn't have changed content so that all renames could be
done in one pre-commit?

I mentioned `git commit --only` here just to point out that `git
commit` already has the ability to make a commit without using the
current index as the new commit's source.  A "just do renames"
commit operation (in spite of other changes already made in the
current index) would need similar functionality.

Exactly how this might work, I haven't defined.

Huh, I just read the docs on [hg mv]... does that mean hg already has
this functionality of being able to store a "this was renamed" marker
in its index?

Mercurial does not have an index in the first place.  The internal
structure of the Mercurial database is an append-only series of
changelongs, with files stored as deltas from the previous version
of that file (with some exceptions).  Files are listed in a manifest,
and renaming a file preserves the file's identity despite the
change of name.

(This internal format is very different from Git's.  Git is a
content-addressable file system, rather than an append-only
changelog.)

Chris