Now that you mention it, I have encountered that problem when trying to trace Changes across modules that have been split from or combined into parent distributions.

You are close: I am trying to preserve the invariant that each file is only changed in the repository when it is meaningfully changed. A file that has not been meaningfully changed since release 0.0.1, should indicate as such in Git, at least on the master branch... and that gives me an idea that preserves the ability to run prove on the working tree even though the tests verify that $VERSION is checked... I could have the release scripts replace the typeglob aliases with $VERSION literals, build and test the new release, store the release tarball, then use git reset to revert back to the development line in the post-release script.