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

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

AntC writes:

 > [inode, etc] 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?

Sounds very delicate to me.  Points that would worry me: The ambiguity
of multiple links to the same file.  Breaking of hard links on edit by
some editors and not others.  Resurrection of deleted files (whether
by checking out an old version or restoring from backup).

bzr (bazaar.canonical.com) does track "containers" (ie, it could know
which on-disk data is the original and which the copy, and it
distinguishes between remove from repo + readd under a new name from
an atomic rename), but it doesn't track inodes.  It has its own
database and identifiers for this.