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@JATothrim_v2@programming.dev

Post #1812696

2026-04-30 09:51 UTC

Replicating git history for a file takes 1 merge commit and 3 commits, and this is propably one of the most complex workflows I have encountered: (might not be correct...) git checkout -b work git mv file file.tmp git commit git checkout -b copy HEAD^ git mv file file2 git commit git checkout work # can be skipped if you merge "work" instead. git merge copy # "work" and "copy" must conflict, stage file.tmp and file2 and commit the result. git mv file.tmp file git commit I would love to squash this into a single commit, but git doesn’t have a copy operation or detection. :(

Replies (2)

  • @psycotica0@lemmy.ca 2026-04-30 12:28

    Huh. I have never in my 19 year career using git, ever wanted to copy a file and pretend all of the history of that file is also the history of the new file. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever even wanted to copy a file? Why are you copying a file? Like, maybe I’m just too familiar with git to see the forest for the trees, but what the heck are you doing over there? 😅 And just in case it’s useful, a tip is that you can use git blame -C to have the blame algorithm use a heuristic to try and find a “source” line if it was moved, including from another file, during a commit, and then continue following the history of that line, to try and get the real commit where this was written, not just the last time it was moved around.

    Open ##1813012

  • @kevincox@lemmy.ml 2026-04-30 23:03

    You seem to be making this very complex. But it really isn’t. Yes, git doesn’t track renames. So you are working around it by splitting your operation into 2 commits. A pure rename. A file change. This way 1 is always considered a rename and 2 is just a regular file change with the same path. You may also consider tweaking the default rename detection threshold with flags like –find-renames or options like diff.renameLimit. Would it be nice if Git tracked renames? Probably. But that isn’t how the data model works so it is unlikely to happen soon. But maybe they could add some metadata.

    Open ##1824035