Re: git history tracking across renames (and emacs support)

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Eli.

On Wed, Jan 03, 2018 at 17:36:31 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> > Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2018 22:24:57 -0500

> > Also we need to "interpret" the ChangeLog guidelines in the context of
> > tools such as vc-region-history where we don't need to look through the
> > ChangeLog just to know when a given piece of code was modified.

> Let's not forget that we don't always have access to a VCS.  Moreover,
> sometimes you are looking for information that is not easily gleaned
> from Git history.  One example is establishing whether some change was
> in Emacs XX.YY or in a later version.  Given our messy DAG and Git's
> general indifference to branch-specific history, I find the
> ChangeLog's in the tarball a better tool for this job.

I agree.  Frequently, I am looking for recent changes in a particular
function.  C-s in the ChangeLog is much more convenient than a git blame
(or several of them in succession) followed by remembering the hash of an
indicated change (or several of them), followed by a git show (or several
of them).

Let's please keep these individual function change descriptions in the VC
log (which will eventually become the ChangeLog).

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).