[darcs-users] The minimal set of changes

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

On 24/11/2014 10:07, Xan wrote:

> So what darcs record these changes as content changes and not as "renaming files" changes. If the content is greater, then it's cheaper to have rename patch than diff patch of the contents.
> 
> Is there any reason for that?
> What's is the minimal set of changes calculed between two sets of files? Is there any theory of that? I read the theory documents and I can't see that.

In general darcs doesn't automatically try to look for "clever" changes
like file move/rename and token replace.

The development version of darcs (i.e. the upcoming 2.10 release) does
have the --look-for-moves and --look-for-replaces flags, but they're
based on heuristics and don't make any effort to find a "minimal" set of
changes.

I think this is an important topic though, particularly if/when darcs
acquires more and more complicated patch types.

Cheers,

Ganesh