I'm sorry but projects way bigger and complext than boost handle entire history and use full code (Linux... for example) Right, but those projects aren't being split into hundreds of individual modules which will often coexist in separate repositories on the same machine. Always storing the full history of all of Boost in each of those individual repositories doesn't make sense. Part of the point of this transition is to make development less encumbered for everyone, and that would have the opposite effect.
isn't there a middle way between `lose all history' and `keep all history'? i didn't follow the whole discussion, but from my understanding the new layout for a lib `foo` is basically the content of libs/foo and boost/foo moved to include/boost/foo. so isn't it possible to rewrite the history in a way to keep the the old history, but filter out everything which is not in libs/foo or boost/foo? then each modular repository would have only the history relevant for that specific lib. it will require some `git filter-branch` magic, but in theory it should work. something like: * git-svn to import the full trunk * git filter-branch --index-filter '${remove everything except libs/foo and boost/foo}' * git mv boost libs/foo/include * git mv libs/foo . that should leave the resulting repository at an acceptable size, but keep the history that is relevant for the individual modules ... has this been considered or are there arguments against this approach? tim