[vtk-developers] [vtkusers] CVS->Git Transition Plan

[Brad King]

Bill Lorensen wrote:
> Is there something equivalent to the Attic in git?

Git tracks the entire project tree, not files.

Each commit in Git is an object that points to a representation
of the complete content of the project as of that version.  A
commit also points at a "parent" commit that precedes it in
history.  The parent commit refers to its own whole copy of the
project content as of its own version.

All file-wise history is *inferred* by looking at the differences
between content at the same path through history.  The motto is
"dumb add, smart view".  It can infer copies, renames, etc. most
of the time.  Even when a file does not even exist in the current
commit you can still get its history because the current commit
refers to its ancestry whose commits that had the file.

-Brad