People would get lazy and rename a file without telling Subversion they had done it, so it would write a “old file deleted, new file created from nothing” revis

People would get lazy and rename a file without telling Subversion they had done it, so it would write a “old file deleted, new file created from nothing” revision. Most of the merge conflict resolution machinery just couldn’t run without the missing guidance. Git infers someone probably renamed a file you edited or vice versa, which seems risky but works better in practice.