Re: [Monotone-devel] Splitting a file and preserving history

[Justin Patrin]

On 2/27/07, Eric Anderson <address@hidden> wrote:
> All,
>         Yesterday, while working on project, I wanted to split a file
> into two separate files.  I was hoping to preserve the history on one
> of the split out files so that things like annotate would tell you
> where various bits came from.  Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out a
> way to do this, and looking at the monotone history, when the same
> operation occurred (commands.cc -> cmd_*.cc) the new files were just
> added, and the old file had all the bits removed, losing easy access
> to the history information.
>         So I have two questions:
>
>    1) have I missed the feature somewhere?
>
>    2) does such a thing make sense in the current monotone structure?
>       It would be similar to mtn rename, but instead would be a copy.
>       If it makes sense, and seems valuable to others, can anyone give
>       me a pointer to where I would go to add this feature?

The easiest way to support this would be to allow copying of a file
within monotone, keeping its hostory. This should be entirely feasable
but will need some thought as to how merge operations work. The
interesting cases are those where a file is copied in one "branch" but
not in another and changes are made independently. If you make changes
to the non-copied branch and merge to the copied branch the changes
should likely be applied to both the copies. However, if you made the
copy in order to "split" the content then one or both of the copies
are going to have a content conflict (I think).

Even worse is what happens if you make changes on both sides?

Likely this will all work out if you consider each file's ancestry on
its own but none of this has been implemented or thought completely
through, AFAIK.

--
Justin Patrin