Brief article on benchmarks of Python repository with leading DVCSen

[David Cournapeau]

Talden wrote:
>
> No, I meant what I said.  We NEED tracked renames.  It is necessary to
> be able to trace the history of a class and file names, locations in
> the tree and contents change during refactoring.  Changing the package
> changes the package statement, often changes imports and sometimes
> changes invocations within the file (and rarely does the refactor
> occur just to rename so naturally there are content changes too).
> Being able to trace back in history through several rename/moves has
> been invaluable often - failure to merge forward through the renames
> has been equally painful, often.
>   

I find this statement puzzling, but I may miss something since I don't
use IDE. My main languages are C and python nowadays - python is similar
to java in the sense that filenames are significant, and import
statement need to be changed when file are renamed. But still, I don't
find rename tracking that useful. If filenames change in a branch, you
need to coordinate with other people anyway for the changes to be
meaningful for anything non trivial - or are java IDE powerful enough to
make all this automatic ? But certainly, if that's the case, it means
the IDE needs to understand java (needs to be able to understand where
classes start and all), and at this point, this could be done in git as
well.

To me, this at least shows that saying that git cannot track content
reliably is bogus: if IDE can do it, git can do it, in principle at
least. And if one say that git cannot do it, then IDE cannot do it
either, no ?

cheers,

David