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Mark Replaced

Use Modify|Mark Replaced to mark modified files or a directory as replaced, see Common Primary File States for details.

Marking modified files or a directory as replaced does not affect the contents of the files or directories, but only the meaning of the commit and the history of the directory/files. This can be useful to express that the content of a directory/files is not related to its previous revision. The Log of such a directory/files will not go beyond the replacement revision, meaning that the directory/files has been created at that revision.

Example

For example, we have a Java interface Person.java and one implementing class PersonImpl.java. As the result of a refactoring, we are getting rid of the interface Person.java and rename the class PersonImpl.java to Person.java. This results in a removed file PersonImpl.java and a modified file Person.java.

When simply committing these changes, this would mean that the class PersonImpl.java has been removed and the interface Person.java has been changed to a class Person.java, with no history except of that one of the interface.

Taking a closer look at this situation, it would be better to do a commit meaning that the interface Person.java has been removed and the class PersonImpl.java has been renamed to Person.java. At least that was the intention of our refactoring and it would also mean to preserve the history of PersonImpl.java for Person.java.

To achieve this, we will use Mark Replaced on Person.java and then we will use Move on Person.java and PersonImpl.java, performing a ‘post-move’ between both files (for details refer to Move), yielding a removed PersonImpl.java and a replaced Person.java, which has its history (Copy From) set to PersonImpl.java.