Comments on: take care when renaming files in git

By: Robin

Robin — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:18:49 +0000

Yes, use “git log -M -p” and you will see if a file was renamed. You’ll also see the “small” diff between the old and the new contents if there were any differences beside the renaming.

By: bauermann

bauermann — Sun, 18 May 2008 13:44:29 +0000

My worry is about git log. Does it have such logic? That’s what prompted the e-mail conversation I refer to.

But Andrew Cagney said he re-indented the file before committing, so possibly git’s logic thought the old and new files were too different.

So the thing is, you should not change (or change very little) the file before committing the move.

By: Rodney

Rodney — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:31:15 +0000

This probably isn’t such a big problem in practice. Even though the commit doesn’t record renames, gitk automatically notices the similarities and can show a good diff, reporting the rename. I imagine similar logic is used when merging, but have never tried.

Was pleased to notice this after doing a big refactor of some Java code in eclipse then git add … ; git remove … ; git commit.

Cheers,

Rodney