Handling renames: svn vs. git vs. mercurial

Question

How do each of these VCS handle renames?

I have found a lot of contradicting information stating that git tracks LOC (lines of code) instead of files, renames would

Answer 1

One more thing about git that hasn't been mentioned yet, in addition to using heuristics to determine whether a rename has happened:

If a file or even an entire directory tree is renamed, copied, or moved, and nothing underneath is modified in any way, then the file or tree is actually stored as the same object inside the repository, and doesn't take up any extra space.

If you modify it, then it's stored as a new object, as usual.

I'm not sure about hg and svn, but I suspect their changelist-oriented architectures mean they behave differently in this scenario. It doesn't really have any effect on usage, except it might give you reason to avoid moving or copying huge trees inside your repository.