Re: [egit-dev] Git GUI

["Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Schaefer <cdtdoug@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm not sure what state things are in and my early experiences with egit
> have driven me not to use it. Instead, I'm using msysgit and the git-gui
> that came with it. I haven't checked whether it comes with Linux, but I
> guess it does.
> 
> Well, checking the About for the GUI, I see that Shawn, you wrote it! Very
> cool. And I really like it so far. It lets me back out changes, which I
> needed to do tonight. I was then able to checkout, commit, and push my good
> changes with a few simple button clicks.
> 
> So the obvious question that came to my mind, and I'm not sure you guys have
> discussed this, but why doesn't egit have a Perspective that replicates the
> git-gui? This would be very similar to how the ClearCase Remote Client
> plug-in works which I also like (except for all the bugs). It lets you work
> directly with the files in the repository, just like git-gui does. And deals
> with the reality that not everything in your repo is an Eclipse IResource
> and even if it was, sometimes you need to work with the files in a more
> natural environment.

I agree Doug.

Much of the EGit UI was built before git-gui came about.  Later,
the EGit UI just kept on the same UI model, but did get revamped
and improved in terms of its implementation.  I've always wanted
to build a git-gui-ish perspective, but its never been enough of
a priority to me to actually commit the time to it.

Part of the issue has been a lack of a diff implementation in the
JGit library.  I know Eclipse has an LCS implementation available,
but we really want JGit itself to be able to generate git style
diffs, especially with rename and binary blob information in it.
That more or less requires that JGit has an LCS implementation,
so I've partly put off a git-gui-ish perspective because I would
need to call out to that LCS at some point to get a diff to display.

We've actually talked about doing a standalone client based on the
RCP, that could replace git-gui in perhaps a more portable way (e.g.
better Windows compatibility).  But doing that does require having
a git-gui-ish perspective we can extract it out into the build.  :-)

-- 
Shawn.