Re: pw/add-p-select, was Re: What's cooking in git.git (Dec 2018, #01; Sun, 9)

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi Phillip,

[Cc:ing Slavica, the Outreachy intern working on converting `add -i` to a
built-in]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, Phillip Wood wrote:

> On 09/12/2018 20:31, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > 
> > On Sun, 9 Dec 2018, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > 
> > > * pw/add-p-select (2018-07-26) 4 commits
> > >   - add -p: optimize line selection for short hunks
> > >   - add -p: allow line selection to be inverted
> > >   - add -p: select modified lines correctly
> > >   - add -p: select individual hunk lines
> > >
> > >   "git add -p" interactive interface learned to let users choose
> > >   individual added/removed lines to be used in the operation, instead
> > >   of accepting or rejecting a whole hunk.
> > >
> > >   Will discard.
> > >   No further feedbacks on the topic for quite some time.
> > 
> > That is not quite true. I did comment that this feature
> 
> Sorry I meant to reply to that comment but never got round to it.

No worries. We're all busy down here.

> > (which I take as being inspired by Git GUI's "Stage Selected Line"),
> 
> not particularly, I don't use git gui I just wanted a way to easily
> stage a subset of lines without editing the hunk.

Okay. I used to use Git GUI quite a bit to stage individual lines, but
recently I tried to stay more in the terminal and used the `split` and
`edit` commands of `add -p` quite extensively. Wishing for an quicker way
to stage individual lines between all of my debug print statements.

> > and thought that it would be useful.
> > 
> > I could imagine, however, that it would make sense for `git add -p` to
> > imitate that feature more closely: by allowing to stage a single line
> > and then presenting the current hunk (re-computed) again.
> 
> that sounds like it would be quite tedious to stage more than a couple
> of lines,

It would be. But then, if you want to do anything slightly more
complicated than staging a hunk or a line, I personally prefer the `edit`
command *a lot*, as it lets me even split unrelated changes in the same
line into two commits.

> and it could be awkward to get it to stage modified lines correctly
> (While I was writing the feature I tried git gui, I think it is supposed
> to be able to stage modified lines correctly but I never persuaded it to
> do it for me. I also tried gitg, tig and hg commit -i but I couldn't get
> them to do modified lines either)

Git GUI works very reliably for me, but then, I have Git for Windows'
patched Git GUI at my finger tips (oh how I wish we had a Git GUI
maintainer again).

It should not be awkward to stage a single modified line at all.
Essentially, you take the hunk, strip out all `-` and `+` lines except the
one you want to stage, then stage that with `git apply --cached
--recount`, and then you simply re-generate that hunk.

> I'll try and re-roll in the New Year, when does the outreachy project
> for converting add -i start? - it would be good to try and get this
> pinned down before then.

Too late. Slavica started on December 4th, and you can even read about it
on their blog: https://slavicadj.github.io/blog/

Ciao,
Dscho