Post #1814299

2026-04-30 16:47 UTC

Why are you copying a file? I’m splitting a several thousand LOC file, which I don’t have previous history in. 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? Normally copying a file and committing transfers the authorship to you, because the copy just appears from nothing as a brand new file, never known to git. This would prevent browsing the per-line “who changed this last” history past the copy and obfuscate who wrote what and when. (why the downvote?)

Replies (1)

@psycotica0@lemmy.ca 2026-05-01 03:03

Interesting. Yeah, sounds like what git blame -C is for, so I’ve never made copies when splitting files, I’ve just copied lines between files. But I guess if one’s tools are limited and doesn’t have the ability to -C, then I guess I could respect the hack that is that solution? I mean, I’m 99% sure git doesn’t store blame or authorship info in the pack files, even as a convenience cache, and just guesses by traversing the patch log with heuristics live when you run blame anyway, so the history mostly doesn’t matter there, but the way you’ve done it does seem to have tricked the heuristics into doing what you want without relying on an option, so that’s neat! It’s an interesting hack, and I like interesting hacks 😛 By the way, if there are down votes, they’re not from me!

Open ##1829024