The ideal app would know that when I drag a file from one folder to another in my local repo, it should do a git mv behind the scenes so that git will maintain the file’s history and not do a delete and add.
I’m not averse to the command line, but it’s not a good fit for this.
I know that PathFinder has a Git module, but don’t know if it has this capability.
Suggestions appreciated.
Take a look at Forklift
A git mv is a remove and add. I don’t think you’ll find this feature in a client.
Something like this use of watchman would get you a nice-looking log of single file mv commits and not be too difficult to set up—but the effect would be the same as if you added and committed all changes after a session of work.
All this time I thought my mv’s were preserving history. But nay because Linus said so.
Thanks for the info everyone!
We really need a git competitor with semantic diffing and a better merge workflow. 
there is one, it’s called Plastic SCM. It’s a commercial service though.
another one I wish had time exploring is Fossil SCM
I just basically use git as a backup. If I make a branch I usually forget until days later, or see other things that I need to fix along the way. So I do a lot of “Checkpoint” commits. Works for me.
Doesn’t seem to recognise any of my git branches automatically.
Is there a setting to switch it on?
You might want to look into nb which:
nbuses Git in the background to automatically record changes and sync notebooks with remote repositories.nbcan also be configured to sync notebooks using a general purpose syncing utility like Dropbox so notes can be edited in other apps on any device.
In my experience, if I manipulate files into an nb monitored folder with programs other than nb, it records the changes, and git commands show what have been done.
In the screenshot below I added the 123text at the end of a text file with bbedit and saved it, run nb (to have the changes processed) and git show gave the correct result:
It may have some problems with a complex folder structure, but I think it’s worth a try 
Since git isn’t aware of moves (as being moves), I just move and merged the files and folders with Beyond Compare, and it worked really well.
Used sed to fix up my paths, and hopefully everything will be good to go. If things go well and my paper is accepted for publication I don’t expect to run any of this code again. Which is kind of a shame, but I learned some things about coding in MATLAB, structuring, processing, and analyzing data, etc.
