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GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

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Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#31

If you get a lot of value out of the pull request view, you might enjoy adding partial committing to your workflow. Rather than committing entire directories or folders at a time, you can page chunk by chunk through uncommitted changes, committing only the ones you select. You'll easily spot those stray logging statements you don't want to commit. (You can also discard chunk at a time by using partial checkout/restor…

For those who want a GUI around this on Mac, https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/ is an incredible secret weapon. You can swipe over a bunch of lines or let the software identify a whole span of contiguous changed lines, click a button, and see just those changes move over from your unstaged to staged changes, then commit exactly what you want.

A lot of times people don't even understand how powerful the staging area is; they're just used to saying git add && git commit without realizing that it can be an incredible way to take a day of chaotic fixes and turn it into a set of commits you can be proud of!

It also provides an incredible tree view of commit parentage, perfect for when you need to instantly understand what happened with this weird merge/rebase that broke things, and to screenshare it to teach colleagues who might not have developed an internal understanding of the tree structure that Git is based on.

The software is now 9 years old and abandoned, but I've used this specific fork at least weekly - often daily - for every one of those years, across Intel and M1 Macs, and it's never let me down!

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#32

If you get a lot of value out of the pull request view, you might enjoy adding partial committing to your workflow. Rather than committing entire directories or folders at a time, you can page chunk by chunk through uncommitted changes, committing only the ones you select. You'll easily spot those stray logging statements you don't want to commit. (You can also discard chunk at a time by using partial checkout/restor…

This functionality is built-in to vim-fugitive and VS Code.

In Fugitive, open it with :Git , select the unstaged file then press = . Select the desired range with visual mode, then press s and commit as normal.

In VS Code, select a hunk, press Ctrl+P, then type "Stage Selected Range." Repeat this process and commit as normal.

Edit: formatting and typo.

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#33

GitHub desktop/mobile apps have been the worst thing to happen to GH since / along with the acquisition. The website is being neglected, (especially on mobile) which is the primary value the service has for me. If I have `git` I really don't need GitHub except to view comments. Ironically, notifications and comment management is still pretty bad. Don't get me wrong, I still think GitHub is the best at what they do, b…

"The website is being neglected"—really? Compared to their complete feature freeze pre-acquisition, new Github platform features come out regularly (WIP PRs, code owners, the entire Actions and Codespaces products, and Merge Queue being the most recent one). I've never used Github Desktop, but the idea that the website is being neglected just doesn't make any sense to me.

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#34
post #31

If you get a lot of value out of the pull request view, you might enjoy adding partial committing to your workflow. Rather than committing entire directories or folders at a time, you can page chunk by chunk through uncommitted changes, committing only the ones you select. You'll easily spot those stray logging statements you don't want to commit. (You can also discard chunk at a time by using partial checkout/restor…

For those who want a GUI around this on Mac, https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/ is an incredible secret weapon. You can swipe over a bunch of lines or let the software identify a whole span of contiguous changed lines, click a button, and see just those changes move over from your unstaged to staged changes, then commit exactly what you want. A lot of times people don't even understand how powerful the staging area is; t…

There's decent well maintained git ui clients for Mac, eg Fork

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, what an excellent tool. One of those one-time purchases I almost wish was a subscription so I can be sure the team keeps working on it. I actually understand git better because of Merge. It's great because it provides a great interface into git, but it doesn't _hide_ git from you; it explains it quite a well. I suppose a newcomer to git might find Merge intimidating, but for anyone with a bit of experienc…

Licenses are valid for three years of updates. So, it is a subscription, just a very long one with a fallback version when the subscription ends.

I can't imagine the Sublime Merge version I have today won't still be super useful once my license expires, so for a lot of people, buying a new copy might not seem particularly compelling. It's also so cheap (or it was when I bought it) that it's waaayyyyy less expensive than any 3 year subscription I've ever seen – something like $2/month.

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#36
post #31

If you get a lot of value out of the pull request view, you might enjoy adding partial committing to your workflow. Rather than committing entire directories or folders at a time, you can page chunk by chunk through uncommitted changes, committing only the ones you select. You'll easily spot those stray logging statements you don't want to commit. (You can also discard chunk at a time by using partial checkout/restor…

For those who want a GUI around this on Mac, https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/ is an incredible secret weapon. You can swipe over a bunch of lines or let the software identify a whole span of contiguous changed lines, click a button, and see just those changes move over from your unstaged to staged changes, then commit exactly what you want. A lot of times people don't even understand how powerful the staging area is; t…

Can you briefly explain what you meant by staging area is powerful?

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying that they should be focused on the webapp, not slowly abandoning it and making us use the native apps.

Facts over perception, go look at changelog, look at primer... The Web UI gets new features almost daily.

You're missing my point. I don't want all the new features. I want the existing ones taken care of and polished.

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#38
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who want a GUI around this on Mac, https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/ is an incredible secret weapon. You can swipe over a bunch of lines or let the software identify a whole span of contiguous changed lines, click a button, and see just those changes move over from your unstaged to staged changes, then commit exactly what you want. A lot of times people don't even understand how powerful the staging area is; t…

Can you briefly explain what you meant by staging area is powerful?

I assume it’s the fact that staging changes takes them out of your working tree. From there, a lot of git operations (diff, restore) will not include or modify the staged changes. This can help reason about logical chunks of code within a commit

Re: GitHub Desktop 3.2: Preview your pull request

#39

If you get a lot of value out of the pull request view, you might enjoy adding partial committing to your workflow. Rather than committing entire directories or folders at a time, you can page chunk by chunk through uncommitted changes, committing only the ones you select. You'll easily spot those stray logging statements you don't want to commit. (You can also discard chunk at a time by using partial checkout/restor…

You can commit line by line within Github Desktop and its a much nicer experience IMO than doing so via CLI. Its much easier to jump around to different files and commit related line changes in a bigger PR than jumping in and out of the patch command.

  git gui
which you probably already have if you use Linux also has this functionality.
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