[PATCH 0 of 3] RFC: Splitting patch hunks with the record extension

[Patrick Mézard]

Le 24/01/10 20:48, Steve Borho a écrit :

[...]

> Maybe I should throw my 2c in here.  When I imagined adding hunk
> splitting into the tortoisehg commit tool, the dialog I imagined would
> open a particular hunk in a treeview widget that allows a range of
> lines to be selected (aka, rubber banding).  The user would then hit
> 'split' and the tool would try to split the hunk into (at most) three
> pieces.. the lines before the selection, the selection, and the lines
> after the selection.  This could just as easily be generalized to
> split the hunk at each selection/non-selection boundary, but I doubt
> that resolution of splitting would be needed very often.
> 
> Maybe it's just me, bit the git style patch editing seems suited only
> for developers who work with raw patch files all day long.

This patch series and crecord extension both implement hunk splitting, while git and darcs propose hunk editing. So I just wondered what we really want, because I lack of concrete use cases.

I cannot remember using record and saying "argh, I messed up, those changes should not be intermingled, would be great to have hunk splitting!" because when this happens, it means I messed up and I would not trust a simple line filtering to untangle the mess. Instead either I decide it would be too time consuming to fix this mistake and I commit something a bit too large for my taste. Or I take the time and fallback to my $EDITOR and start an editing/compiling/testing cycle again, and filter out one of the changes.

On the other hand, I can remember me saying "argh, there is a (typo in this comment|trailing whitespace), it would be great to fix it right there instead of quitting, fixing in the $EDITOR and recording again". But I would not insist on supporting this workflow either.

So git implementation is hardcore as usual. darcs is nicer and marginally useful to me but I have a vague feeling it will be much less efficient with large hunks, where diffs may be superior to before/after sections.


I am not sure how your "rubber band" selection works with hunks. Imagine:

-----------
@ whatever @
context
context
- line11
- line12
+ line21
+ line22
+ line23
context
context
-----------

How do I record only:
-----------
context
context
- line11
+ line12
+ line22
context
context
------------
? (which is a simple "replace one line with two new lines edit)

--
Patrick Mézard