[PATCH] RFC - Say goodbye to the rodent

Hello list,

Git status provides a list of modified/staged files etc.

Normally I use the mouse to cut and paste the filenames in subsequent git operations.

Oftentimes I get tired of moving my hand away from the comfort of the home rows of my keybard in order to grab the mouse to highlight the files that I'd like to operate on.

This patch is my attempt at scratching this itch. It is, at best, works fine; albeit a little bit experimental. I may have overlooked a dozen things - variable names, places where I define the variables etc. If people find this useful I'll look into polishing the code. All seem to work well. Running make test does not break anything. I have not written test case for them.

The idea is that "git status --id" shows a unique id for each file in its output (modified/staged/unknown/etc). The ids and the corresponding filenames are stored in .git/FILE_IDS. This file gets overwritten everytime you run "git status --id"

Subsequent git operations can be taught to accept the --id command line option to tell them what files to operate on. They will read the FILE_IDS to find out which file to operate based on the given id. In the patch series I have taught the add, checkout, commit, rm and reset commands the --id option.

Example:

$ git status --id # On branch local # Changed but not updated: # (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed) # (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory) # # modified: builtin-write-tree.c (m1) # # Untracked files: # (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed) # # file1.c (x1) # file2.c (x2)

Note the id at the end of the files.

Now we can do the following:

$ git add --id m1

Ids are specified via the --id command line option, and can be separated with commas if you want to specify more than one of them:

$ git add --id m1,x2

You get the idea ...

What do you guys think about this new approach of "cut-and-paste" from the command line?

Where would be the best place to put the file id? end? beginning? before ':'? The argument to --id could be improved so that it understand regexes for file ids.

Comments are welcomed.

Nazri.