Re: Show patch in gitk --first-parent ?

From: Karl Wiberg <kha@treskal.com>
Date: Oct 30, 2013, 17:10 UTC
Message-ID: <CAFAOj7orccjudOu4czDpaN-TZBCFb=T-Qo8f9eo_1dnKBGXJ4g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1lbk7r8.1khd6h5pbrifuM%lists@haller-berlin.de>

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Stefan Haller <lists@haller-berlin.de> wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> I once posted a patch that adds a "First parent" checkbox to gitk's
> window:
> <http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/160920>
>
> The patch no longer applies today, but I can send an updated version
> that does, if there's interest.

Please do. I don't have the time to attempt to drive inclusion of the patch (I'd have to start by reading up on tcl and gitk), but if you have a patch ready, I'd like to try it.

Show 14 quoted lines

> The topic didn't go anywhere for two reasons:
>
> 1) There's the confusion about history traversal option (the
> existing --first-parent command-line option) versus diff option (the
> new check box); they have similar names, but control different
> things (and it should be possible to control these independently).
>
> 2) Space is short in the diff pane; you need to make the window
> rather wide to see them all.
>
> I didn't have the energy to drive these to a resolution back then;
> if you could do that, it would be great. Personally I'm using my own
> gitk with my patch applied, and I do use the "First parent" checkbox
> rather often.

Hmmm, I wonder... a related feature I'd like to have is to see the combined diff of two or more commits. I guess the fully general form of this is to allow the user to select one "after" commit and zero or more "before" commits, and then present the resulting diff.

For example, when the user clicks on the shortlog of a commit, gitk could automatically select its parents (by painting their dots in the DAG differently, say). The user could then click on any commit dot in the dag to toggle it between being included in and excluded from the "before" set. (A simpler variant would be to limit the "before" set to exactly one commit as soon as the user changes it at all.)

As I said, I don't have time to do this myself; I just thought I'd toss the idea out there, since good ideas are so scarce and competent programmers with free time on their hands are so plentiful.

-- 
Karl Wiberg, kha@treskal.com
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   www.treskal.com/kalle