Mark Shuttleworth (of Thawte, Ubuntu, and Canonical fames) wrote four posts on rename tracking feature in version control systems, and its impact on merging as a social process.
Read at his blog:
- “Renaming is the killer app of distributed version control”;
- “Further thoughts on version control”;
- “Choose lossless VCS if you have that luxury”;
- “Merging is the key to software developer collaboration”;
Those posts caught a lot of attention back in June, but frankly it seems to me the issue is somewhat overrated (but nevertheless a recommended reading). Mark’s Canonical Ltd. supports the development of Bazaar. Bazaar has the discussed feature of merging with renames tracking. Git does not have it, but it has another argument in this discussion: huge merging traffic — Linux kernel development is all about merging, and the codebase is huge. So, I guess this feature is not that crucial: Linus is well-known by his uncompromising approach to tools.
