Show HN: `Git add -p` with multiple buckets

https://github.com/aleclearmind/split-patch

by aleclm • 4 years ago

94 51 4 years ago

Oh this is interesting. Sometimes I make unrelated changes and then I want to tease the things apart at commit time. And when I do I find that I don’t just want to stage or skip staging. Worth a shot but I’d prefer if I could put it into secondary staging and post-commit the first of those becomes staged.

Probably doable and shiftable to a git-splitpatch too.

chx2• 4 years ago

perhaps as branches? then we can cherry pick those as needed.

OJFord• 4 years ago

Stashes are more appropriate; since they're really just handier references to commits they can be cherry-picked too, as `stash@{N}` where N is the zero-based integer for which one you want.

(You can even `git cherry-pick stash@{0}^` for the commit the stash was made at. It really is just a commit made at that point, with that parent, only without updating HEAD, or the checked-out branch.)

Sharlin• 4 years ago

In modern gits you can also `git stash -p` allowing you to use (named if needed) stashes for that purpose.

aleclm3• 4 years ago

This is different.

The key value of `split-patch` is that you can create as many patches (commits) as you want by doing a single pass over the (potentially large) patchset.

If you're willing to do multiple passes over the patchset, you could `git commit` right away.

Anyway, cool, I didn't know you could name stashes!

abalaji• 4 years ago

This is great, I've been using Sublime Merge similarly in my workflow. I stage individual files while drafting the commit message and make sure to split lines across commits for logical rollbacks. I personally find it a lot faster than using the CLI, at least in this case.

barbazoo• 4 years ago

I agree. For this workflow using a GUI to stage individual lines is just a lot faster.

hultner• 4 years ago

Same here, I’m a tmux junkie but for the particular use case of staging smaller parts I much prefer sublime. Have been meaning to give fugitive a proper try as well, looks like it’a gui allows for a similar use case as well without the context switch.

warmwaffles• 4 years ago

I specifically love committing individual lines in a hunk and leaving the rest not staged until I am good and ready to stage them. It's been a great addition to my workflow and makes self reviewing my stuff easier before I go to send a PR.

dorianmariefr• 4 years ago

I feel like this should be part of git, also naming it git-split-patch and having it in the PATH would allow to to do `git split-patch`

aleclm3• 4 years ago

Yeah, that's what I want to do next.

pabs34• 4 years ago

Please keep the main command too, since it is useful outside of git too, like when using the quilt patch system, or other VCSen like Mercurial.

pabs34• 4 years ago

It is useful outside of git, so I would suggest having both the git alias and the main command.

fuzzy22• 4 years ago

Ah, finally changelists are coming to Git. Having worked with Perforce, this certainly feels very familiar.

charcircuit2• 4 years ago

This is unrelated to git. What do you mean by change list?

fuzzy22• 4 years ago

Dunno what you mean by this being unrelated to Git.

In Git, you can stage files (git add). You have only one “staging area”. In Perforce, you can also stage files (of sorts). You can create as many “staging areas” (changelists) as you want. Changelists are publicly visible, if so desired, before they are even “committed” (submitted, in P4 jargon).

Changelists work on entire files, unlike what TFA proposes.

alfiedotwtf• 4 years ago

Oh very nice! This almost seems obvious that it should be part of git itself!

almog3• 4 years ago

Is the main use case being splitting large uncommitted change set into logical units in _one pass_ rather than few iterations of `git add -p && git commit`?

bckr• 4 years ago

this is my question as well

teaearlgraycold• 4 years ago

That would be helpful for me. Sometimes I forget which pass I'm on and have to redo the commit.

almog3• 4 years ago

I don't do this often, but when I watched the demo that was the only use case that came to mind.

Perhaps the author had different motivation to start it, which is why I posted this question — the demo explain what the program does but provide little context other than extracting actual patches, and then again, it begs the question of 'why'.

aleclm3• 4 years ago

That's exactly the use case.

almog3• 4 years ago

Cool, I thought there might be some other flow I was not aware of, thanks for clarifying that!

The demo recording is good and I think it would be even better to state the motivation/use case explicitly in the README.

jayd162• 4 years ago

This is the one P4 workflow feature I wish git had from the beginning. In Perforce, changes can be grouped into uncommitted "change lists." Its really helpful if you're working on multiple things especially when they're unrelated features or projects. Works very well for artists and such.

Sadly P4 fumbles at the 10 because you can't split changes by hunk, file only.

I hope something like this (or maybe just multiple named stages?) makes it into git.

RyJones• 4 years ago

Are you ex-MSFT? I am, and I miss that workflow.

noitpmeder• 4 years ago

My company still uses p4 for most things and most developers I know HATE it, compared to the equivalent git(hub/lab).

Largest complaints currently are the infesibility of the feature-branch workflow and the terribad pre-commit code review story.

jayd162• 4 years ago

I much prefer git and the git ecosystem but a good feature is a good feature

vbezhenar• 4 years ago

Idea can do that with git.

pabs34• 4 years ago

I generally just use `git gui` to make multiple commits by staging and then committing just the lines I want.

spartanatreyu2• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure git got rid of their `git gui` command a while ago.

What version of git are you using? You probably want to check with `git --version`.

The latest version is 2.35.1.

pabs34• 4 years ago

I'm using 2.35.1, perhaps you haven't installed the git-gui and gitk packages for your distro?

Both git gui and gitk are still in the git repo AFAICT:

https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/git-gui https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/gitk-git

westurner• 4 years ago

There are probably a couple good ways to avoid trying to split `git add -p` with e.g. jujutsu `jj`? https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/blob/main/docs/git-comparis...

If CI isn't running tests for every PR, `git add -p` can create pretty patches that fail when attempting to `git bisect` later.

Comprehensive support for rewriting history: Besides the usual rebase command, there's `jj describe` for editing the description (commit message) of an arbitrary commit. There's also `jj edit`, which lets you edit the changes in a commit without checking it out. To split a commit into two, use `jj split`. You can even move part of the changes in a commit to any other commit using `jj move`.

u801e3• 4 years ago

There's a set of utilities[1] in a package called patchutils that contains several commands to manipulate patches. Their version of splitdiff[2] will create a set of patch files from a single patch where each patch would only apply to a single file. It doesn't appear to have the capability of splitting out individual hunks like your version, but could be updated to do so.

[1] https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Patchutils

[2] https://www.unix.com/man-page/suse/1/splitdiff/

mushyhammer2• 4 years ago

I find it crazy how many people like working with git from the command line and just use -a any chance they get.

I never commit from CLI and have been using GitHub Desktop for years (it works on any repo/remote). Selecting individual files, patches, or even lines is a breeze. I usually make a bunch of changes, then pick, commit, branch, repeat. Every branch is based off `main` and can be pushed independently. Any leftover will just be dropped (any logging/testing lines that I never picked, for example)

Using a UI makes it easy to review your changes before you commit them, there’s no way you can review (and pick or discard) your 100-lines 5-files changes effectively on the command line.

GitHub Desktop is quite limited and I hope it stays that way, I still use the cli for operations other than commit and checkout.

u801e3• 4 years ago

I actually use the git cli by filtering text to various command std input using vim. So, for staging diffs, I'll read the output of git diff, and hand edit the diff as needed, and stage individual hunks by filtering the text through the git apply command with the appropriate parameters.

I can then run git status -v to show what's currently staged, write the commit message and filter it through the git commit command.

there’s no way you can review (and pick or discard) your 100-lines 5-files changes effectively on the command line.

It's easy enough to find the approriate hunk and edit the diff to stage what's needed. I may go through the process a few times to create a single commit depending on how many hunks I have to deal with and how many times I need to split them though.

In fact, my normal workflow is to make the necessary changes for a particular feature I'm working on, take the diff against the base branch and then stage parts of that diff to create a series of sensible commits for the branch.

1MachineElf• 4 years ago

I would really like to see this workflow. Are there any articles, videos, or asciinemia recordings of how this is done?

sixstringtheory• 4 years ago

Git CLI user here. I started out using Sourcetree about 10 years ago and have slowly moved everything into the terminal after also using many other GUIs. `git add -p` was the last thing to move to terminal because it can be hard to stage individual lines in hunks that can’t be automatically split.

But after I picked up emacs again and started using magit even that became a breeze.

Also, for reviewing changes, I use the no context option `git diff -U0`and more recently use git-delta for better color highlighting and the side-by-side diff view.

I also think in addition to just having learned and practiced over a decade, the way I’ve used Git has evolved too. I keep PRs small and cohesive, always squash all their commits, and because of that I don’t have to care so much about untangling cohesive changes at commit time, although I also don’t let them pile up. I usually do a lot of `git commit --amend` and `git commit --fixup` (more and more rarely actually followed by a `git rebase --autosquash` since the PR takes care of the squash now… I don’t even have to worry about order-based conflicts anymore).

austinjp• 4 years ago

I didn't know about git delta, thanks for this. Presumably your referring to https://github.com/dandavison/delta ?

Does anyone have any tips for integrating it into an emacs workflow? I'm currently doing `git commit` from shell which launches emacs-nox with magit.

pca006132• 4 years ago

I would say vim-fugitive is great for this.

larusso• 4 years ago

I use the git cli exclusively. The reason for it was Sourcetree. I started with git in 2010 coming from svn and had a hard time to wrap my head around the basic concepts of staging, commit and push etc. I used sourcetree and the docs and was very confused with the UI because it sometimes contradicted the understandings I got from the docs. So started using it from the cli and never switched back. In the beginning I used the ‘-i’ flag for the ‘git add’ a lot to filter out what files to stage etc. This was mainly because I worked in an unfamiliar project and wasn’t able to write out file paths from memory.

That has changed over the years. I use a few custom created aliases + specific Workflows how I go about making changes to a project.

I’m not interested in any of the fancy git UIs (sourcetree, tower, fork, kraken) because each tries to simplify git and or would break my workflow. For instance I don’t use Explorer, Finder etc to traverse files. I open a new terminal session and cd through my file system. I have a strict setup which I replicate on the different machines/VMs I use so I know it from memory. I don’t need to switch to a UI tool that knows where all my checkouts are and klick a terminal button to start a session there. I work from the terminal and open Idea, VSCode or vim from the project. The latter is the reason I could not adopt eMacs as it didn’t really work well for me with this kind of workflow.

And last. I stopped doing multiple fancy changes all at once in a project that would warrant the use of specialized tools or UIs. If I see that a change gets out of hand I start to formulate base batches on the go. I can create a series of commits and split them up/rebase afterwards.

But I don’t Stopp anyone from doing it differently. We are all wired differently and use the given tools how we feel best.

Ah also working with a lot of remote headless machines it is nice if you know you way around the cli in general. Or my favorite issue I had the last couple of weeks switching from Nvidia to AMD (X-Server did not start) issues ;) No ui to help to fix this.

weird-eye-issue• 4 years ago

Using a UI makes it easy to review your changes before you commit them, there’s no way you can review (and pick or discard) your 100-lines 5-files changes effectively on the command line.

Sorry, what? A command line IS a UI. And it happens to be great for displaying text, like what is displayed with git diff...

mushyhammer2• 4 years ago

I mean GUI, a clickable interface with columns and such. With a CLI you get all the files in a single scrollable area.

Side note: there are also GUIs for the terminal, they’re fine.

junon• 4 years ago

I wish git supported this directly. Even if it was specific functionality to `git commit -p`.

ArtRichards• 4 years ago

I was looking a few years ago for a GUI for git, on linux. I eventually settled on SmartGit, been using it since..

https://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/

Anyone have alternatives for Linux?

davvid• 4 years ago

http://git-cola.github.io/ has all of the nice split-patch index editing stuff (and much more) and is vimmish in its keyboard interactions.

efficientsticks• 4 years ago

I haven’t used it in years, but magit is really great.

Nowadays I just do a few rounds of git add -p; commit, or trusty ole git commit -av

kasabali• 4 years ago

See also Mercurial Queues (https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/MqExtension)

Show HN: `Git add -p` with multiple buckets

Related Stories