Subject: Re: [boost] [git] Mercurial?
From: Daniel James (dnljms_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-03-22 15:37:54


On 22 March 2012 17:17, Dave Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> on Thu Mar 22 2012, Martin Geisler <mg-AT-aragost.com> wrote:
>
>> Julien Nitard <julien.nitard_at_[hidden]> writes:
>>
>>>> It seems that everybody has heard of this magic... but nobody has
>>>> actually seen it, and nobody can remember where they read about it :)
>>>
>>> I do, in case somebody is interested. It's in the introduction to
>>> Mercurial wrote by Joel Spolski.that was posted here not so long ago.
>>>
>>> http://hginit.com/00.html paragraph "One more big conceptual difference".
>>
>> Oh, yeah, that guide... :)
>>
>> I'm afraid Joel didn't really know what he was talking about back when
>> he wrote that piece.
>
> +1

Wrt. git, the 'magic' certainly predates 'hg init'. For example, see
the second answer at:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1897585/how-does-git-handle-merging-code-that-was-moved-to-a-different-file

I think it dates back to early git development, when people were
arguing about rename tracking. I think people might have read too much
into things like:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/217

Or maybe got confused with the content tracking in 'git blame'. Or
things just get distorted as they are repeated.