Why 'hg mv' (mercurial) doesn't move a file's history by default?

Question

I know how to do it, I just can't understand why hg mv doesn't move the file's history as well by default.

It really seems silly to be obligated me to run hg log --follow before hg mv. This remembers me the times with cvs when you needed to remove and add a file using two different operations and losing history in the same way.

IMHO, if I were just using builtin mv that would be ok to lose history, but I'm using hg mv, and, thinking about the repository itself, it doesn't make sense to lose the history by default. There should be hg mv --no-follow and not the other way round.

This isn't intuitive. Anyone here has a sane explanation about this behavior? Is this an error by design, or there's really a good reason for it? Is it possible to do this --follow by default someway when using hg mv?

Answer 1

You can can change the default behaviour of log: in your ~/.hgrc (or somewhere/Mercurial.ini), add

[alias]  log = log -f  

I've read the appearance of the log is for speed reason. Move isn't truly a "first level" operation in Mercurial. It's a copy + delete (this compared to Bazaar where the move/rename is a "first level" operation but that doesn't have a copy with history preservation).

Answer 2

You don't know how to do it. hg log --follow affects how the log is displayed, not how the actual move is done. By default, the history of the filename is displayed. --follow follows renames and copies. This fits with how Mercurial is internally implemented.

There is no reason whatsoever to run hg log --follow before hg mv.