Re: [Gnu-arch-users] splitting a file

[Miles Bader]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 09:22:13AM +0100, Beda Kosata wrote:
> I would like to split a large file into two (or more) smaller files. It 
> seems to me that the only way to do it and retain the history would be 
> to copy that file.
> Is there any other way I am missing or any plan to include support for 
> file copies (as I understand several revision control systems do that).

No -- arch will probably never support them as such (see the thread referred
to by another respondent).

If the only reason you actually want such a thing is for the purpose of the
`file history', keep in mind (here I'm repeating what I said in that other
thread) that there's really no concept of a `file history' in arch.  Files
are changed as part of changesets, and changesets have an associated
patch-log.  A tool can re-construct something like a file-history for a file
in a sequence of patch-logs (such as those in a particular branch--version)
by seeing which changesets changed the file.

So, it _would_ be possible to simply agree on a header for patch-logs to
record the fact that a file is derived from another file.  This would merely
be a clue for file-history-constructing-utilities such as described above,
and probably be ignored for all other purposes.  The user could add it
mantually to a patch-log being committed.

For instance (roughly following the format of Renamed-files:):

  Derived-files: SRC1 DST1_1 DST1_2 ... DST1_N
                 SRC2 DST2_1 DST2_2 ... DST2_N
                 ...

-Miles
-- 
((lambda (x) (list x x)) (lambda (x) (list x x)))