{"thread":{"id":"28955","subject":"Suggestions for gitk","startedAt":"2011-11-17T05:53:41Z","lastAt":"2011-11-17T05:53:41Z","messageCount":1,"participants":["Michael Haggerty"],"isPatch":false,"patchVersion":null,"patchTotal":null},"messages":[{"id":"179612","messageId":"4EC4A165.2060002@alum.mit.edu","threadId":"28955","inReplyTo":null,"subject":"Suggestions for gitk","fromName":"Michael Haggerty","fromEmail":"mhagger@alum.mit.edu","sentAt":"2011-11-17T05:53:41Z","receivedAt":"2011-11-17T05:53:41Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"mhagger@alum.mit.edu","avatar":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/119718?v=4"},"body":"I use gitk every day and love it.  I have a few suggestions that IMO\nwould make it even better.  Please note that I've been collecting these\nideas for a while, and they are only small niggles about an excellent tool.\n\n1. Add a \"HEAD\" button\n\nFrequently I want to jump to the HEAD revision after having moved around\nin the history for a while.  Since HEAD is not always at the top of the\nrevision list, I do this by typing \"HEAD\" into the \"SHA1 ID\" field.  Is\nthere a better way already?  If not, I think it would be very convenient\nto have a small \"HEAD\" button near that field that causes gitk to jump\nthere.\n\n2. Option to check out new branch\n\nAfter I \"Create new branch\", I often want to check out the new branch\n(the equivalent of \"git checkout -b BRANCH REV\").  So it would be\nconvenient if the dialog opened by right-clicking on a commit and select\n\"Create new branch\" offered the option to check out the newly-created\nbranch.  For example, it could have a third confirmation button \"Create\nand check out\", or it could have a tick box \"Check out new branch\".\n\n3. Allow \"Branches: many (N)\" to be expanded\n\nThere is some limit above which the commit window doesn't list the\nbranches that contain the commit, but instead displays \"Branches: many\n(N)\".  But sometimes one wants to know anyway.  For example, the field\ncould be a link that one could click on to open a dialog box listing all\nof the branches containing the commit.\n\nIn fact, a tabular format would often be more convenient than the\ncurrent format (which is hard to skim through due to its horizontal\nlayout and often scrolls off the right side of the screen) even if there\nare only a few branches, and the same applies to \"Tags\", \"Precedes\",\netc.  So perhaps this dialog could be made available in all cases, even\nif the branches/tags/etc are expanded in the commit summary.\n\n4. Hide \"commit\" part of window\n\nWhen I'm trying to get an overview of the history, I am often not\ninterested in the commit summary.  So it would be great if there were a\nhotkey to hide the \"commit\" part of the window and allow the \"log\" part\nof the window to use the whole surface.  This would be like\nThunderbird's \"F8\" key (which I also use all the time), so if this\nfeature is implemented you might consider using \"F8\" for it.\n\n5. Tab completion in \"SHA1 ID\" field\n\nIt would be wonderful if the SHA1 ID field supported some kind of tab\ncompletion for branch names, similar to that offered by the git mode for\nbash.  Currently it is painful to type a long branch name into this field.\n\n6. Display \"git log\" command line\n\nI assume that gitk is using something like \"git log\" to generate the\nlist of commits that it displays.  The \"git log\" command line can be\nconfigured quite flexibly using the \"F4\" dialog.  So flexibly, in fact,\nthat I often wonder what options it is passing to \"git log\".  I think it\nwould be cool if gitk would display the \"git log\" command line that\ncorresponds to the options currently selected in the \"F4\" dialog.\n\n7. Tags squeeze out commit message in the \"log\" window\n\nIf a commit has a tag, the tag is listed next in the first column of the\n\"log\" window, pushing the first line of the commit message off to the\nright.  If a commit has multiple tags, it can easily happen that the\ntags push the commit's log message completely out of the window.  There\nis no scrollbar, so there is no way to see the commit message in this\nsituation.\n\nThe inability to read the commit message is not such a problem, because\none can select the commit and see the commit message in the bottom part\nof the window.  More frustrating is that in this situation, it is\nimpossible to get to the menu that is normally accessed by\nright-clicking on the commit message.\n\nSo perhaps the menu could also be made available elsewhere, for example\nby right-clicking on the blue dot on the \"graph\" part of the display,\nand/or by right clicking on author and date associated with the commit.\n\n\nI don't know tcl/tk; otherwise I'd try to make some of these changes by\nmyself...\n\nThanks for listening,\nMichael\n\n-- \nMichael Haggerty\nmhagger@alum.mit.edu\nhttp://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/\n"}]}