[darcs-users] [planet darcs] Automatic detection of file renames for Darcs

AntC anthony_clayden at clear.net.nz
Thu Aug 22 06:16:44 UTC 2013


> José Neder <jlneder <at> gmail.com> writes:
> ...

Thanks José for the quick response.

> I don't know if any other vcs use it but i guess not because i didn't
> see a feature like this anywhere else.

Me neither. I wonder why?

> I didn't read all the paper but i guess you means the labels used to
> uniquely identify files? It is mentioned in the subsection 4.1 Rename
> Files.

Yes. And in section 4.2 Directory moves.

> You could say is a unique identifier but one assigned by the
> filesystem and not the repo, so it is useful for the almost the same
> things mentioned in the paper.

I think the paper is going one step further (section 5.2 Moving patches 
across repos; and Section 6 comparison to darcs 'adapting representation' 
meaning that "patches cannot be signed" -- although the discussion is 
rather sketchy). I think that what they're aiming for is a file id that is 
globally unique across all repos.

> Putting it shortly inode are not persistent between filesystems ...
> For any other filesystem or machine the inode number means nothing, ...

Yes, I didn't expect inode to be unique/persistent globally. That's why I 
suggested prefixing inode with the repo id (plus machine id?) to arrive at 
a globally unique file id. (I know there's a regular discussion topic in 
darcsland about GUID's.)

Then wherever the file gets pulled/pushed, the patch could carry the 
file's GUID. Each repo would maintain a map of file GUID <-> inode-in-my-
repo.

> ... [inodes] are almost like any other number you can choose at random.

Sounds exactly like a GUID to me ;-)


> 
> 2013/8/22 AntC <anthony_clayden <at> clear.net.nz>:
> > I see that José Neder is doing some work to use inode ...
> >
> > Hi José,
> > are inode and Windows' File Index number guaranteed persistent through
> > renames/directory moves and edits of the file?
> >
> > It seems an easy way to keep track of files. Do other VCS's use it? Is
> > there some reason darcs hasn't used it before?
> >
> > inode sounds like in the 'Principled Approach to Version Control' 
paper:
> > unique identifiers internal to the repo.
> > If DARCS could prefix inode with a unique repo identifier, that would 
give
> > a GUID for every file wherever it gets pulled(?)
> >





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