Absorb moved files

[lennartbrandin]

Goal: Move files in history using jj absorb

I want to move the entirety of my files into a subfolder and reflect this in the history using jj absorb so if a file was created somewhere at ch in myfile.txt after the absorbing the move it should be at ch in sub/myfile.txt and all subsequent changes will also modify that moved file.

Idea: Move in end of branch and jj absorb

@  yptvkxqv
│  mv a new
○  nvozzrym
│  3 to a
○  opvyskul
│  2 to a
○  ouupmwku
│  1 to a

Conflict at ou in ./a

+++++++ Contents of side #1
1
%%%%%%% Changes from base to side #2
-1
 2
 3

While i wouldve wanted simply the move of the (at that time) to new/a and the change op would modify new/a instead.

Why: Clean history

With the ease of rebasing (currently solo so rewriting history is not an issue) i found myself aiming for a "perfect history", written lines should be perfect at that time in history. So if i make any edits i do it in the changes when a feature was introduced.

Is this possible? Is my idea perhaps fundamentally flawed?

[martinvonz]

I'm not sure if we should make jj absorb work that way, but once we add jj file rename (tentative command name), you will be able to do jj file rename -r o a new to rename the file in commit o. That rename will then propagate to descendants.

[lennartbrandin]

That sounds like a great feature (Tho for me jj file move would be more intuitive if moving to other folders is possible), Is there a Pull request or some dicussion for this?

No i feel that behavior doesnt fit with jj absorb since it is supposed to target the most recent changes. Fitting would be making the move in the recent change, e.g nv in this example. (Im not sure of jj absorbs current behavior)

There is also this https://blog.eliaswatson.dev/posts/jj_rebase_rename/ which models a different use case for the same required solution (and provides itself a rather hacky solution), perhaps anyone later find this useful.

[martinvonz]

For the copy-tracking feature, there's practically only a design doc so far We're working on implementing it.