10 ms·

Part of Github's secret sauce: Web source tree browsing that's front and center, that's relatively decent, with OK search. (versus making the log/history the c

by payne92 10y ago

Part of Github's secret sauce: Web source tree browsing that's front and center, that's relatively decent, with OK search. (versus making the log/history the central part of the Web UI as other tools seem to do) There are SO many times I need a short peek at something, and am glad don't have to clone/download, etc.

mythz 10y ago
GitHub code search + file navigation is so good, that I prefer it to search/navigate code vs opening a VS.NET sln of a repo already cloned locally.
- kzrdude 10y ago
  git grep is still much better than github's search, when it comes to code. Github search doesn't show enough when there are many matches in the same file.
  - mythz 10y ago
    Not when searching for files, find-as-you-type lets you type the least chars/camelHumpsNotation to quickly find + open files you're looking for and its deep linkability lets you quickly share code fragments with remote devs.
    - notriddle 10y ago
      Ctrl-P in SublimeText.
aub3bhat 10y ago
Could not agree more while I was learning to program, it took me months before realizing that it was possible to Browse a Google Code project online.
gioele 10y ago
> Part of Github's secret sauce: Web source tree browsing that's front and center, that's relatively decent, Plus decent rendering of README.md at the same base URL. You get a decent homepage for your project by just pushing your repo. I wish GitLab just copied the base project page of GitHub.
- sytse 10y ago
  We're thinking about adding the file tab to the default view in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26834 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26834
- sb8244 10y ago
  Going to second this. I love the idea of gitlab but I absolutely cannot enjoy the UI. I have trouble understanding the layout of the project from the base URL. I don't have that problem at all on github. Edit: I'm a fool. I swapped gitlab and bitbucket. BB interface is absolutely bad to me.
  - Insanity 10y ago
    Even though you did not mean to say so, I would actually agree that the UI of gitlab is not great either. GitHub's UI/UX is better than Gitlab imo.
tedmiston 10y ago
The "t" key shortcut to do repo wide file search is one off my favorite features.
tyingq 10y ago
I wish github would add an option for a case sensitive search. Tired of getting back ThisThing when I specifically want thisthing (lower case). Also, the search documentation is spread out and seems to be missing guidance on features that are crucial. For example, AND works as you would expect (like: hello AND world), but it isn't mentioned anywhere.
- dajohnson89 10y ago
  This this this. I would spend so much time on GitHub if the search were better. I'm tempted to say that search is less than OK. I do have a huge Java repo, but I'm usually shocked when I quickly find what im querying for.
  - iSnow 10y ago
    Using google and site:github.com? I never use the search on the site...
    - Gracana 10y ago
      And then clicking Tools->Verbatim because google otherwise gives results that are wildly different from what you specify..
      - GrinningFool 10y ago
        I can't believe I've missed this. The quality of my search results at google has been steadily going downhill, and I'm often left with a thought along the lines of, "But if you just searched for only the words I used..." Anyway, thanks for posting it!
        dajohnson89 10y ago
        There should be a search mode for IT professionals. That way, things like curly braces, numbers, and non-words are still treated as meaningful.
yomly 10y ago
Even just being able to browse code when I'm on the go on my phone is useful! I am guilty of occasionally even viewing my own projects on github to avoid having to put down what I'm doing to check what's in production...
- trevor-e 10y ago
  It's unfortunate that their mobile site is very watered down compared to desktop. Every time I view something on my phone I have to request the desktop version of the site.
  - yomly 10y ago
    agree - I do the same too.
  - metaobject 10y ago
    I do that for every site i can think of because, as a person with very poor eyesight, the ability to zoom seems better on desktop-site pages than on mobile-site pages.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      On iOS, Safari Reader helps solve this problem on text heavy pages. I crank the font size up to 16–18px with white text on black background.
    - kevincox 10y ago
      Firefox mobile (at least on Android) has an option that prevents sites from disabling zooming in.
      - Gracana 10y ago
        Chrome also has an accessibility option for this. That discovery solved my problems with a lot of sites.
- SamReidHughes 10y ago
Jedd 10y ago
If you're using chrome / chromium, and you don't know already, then you may be cheered to find out about the Octotree extension: https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree
- rickycook 10y ago
  readme says that it also works in ff and safari
- jefffan241 10y ago
  Thank you for introducing this to me, that is amazing.
wott 10y ago
> OK search Damn... I can't even manage to figure out how it works. I consider myself extremely lucky when it returns the expected result, and that seldom happens.
Stratoscope 10y ago
> Web source tree browsing that's front and center, that's relatively decent, with OK search. The source browsing feels barely adequate to me. There are so many simple things they could do to make it better. • Show file sizes. When I'm exploring a repo I'm unfamiliar with, one thing that's helpful for me is to get a sense of what the code is like. To do this, I want to look at some of the larger files; that's where I'll probably find the more interesting code. As it is I just click around on random files hoping to find something interesting. • Show real dates instead of the vaguely rounded off "how long ago". If it says "a month ago", well, what is it, two weeks or six? And why not show the time? A couple of times I've been looking for a code change and I didn't remember what day it was but I did remember it was right before lunch, maybe around 11:30 or so. It feels like their priority is a "clean and simple" display as opposed to a useful and informative display. • Fix the display for code that indents with tabs. It still defaults to 8 columns, which hardly anyone (with a few notable exceptions) likes. And you, the user, can't override this. They did recently start honoring the indent_size setting if you have a .editorconfig file, but that really misses the point. Many of us who use tabs don't want to specify an indent_size. That's one of the virtues of tabs: people who read the code can use whatever indentation they prefer. The indent size for tabs should be a user preference setting. As it is, I started adding indent_size=4 to my .editorconfig files just to get a decent looking display on GitHub. • Use a readable font on mobile. Courier, really? And not such low contrast! Everything is hard to read on mobile, and they even disabled pinch-zoom so I can't make the text a little bigger. • Show a directory tree on the left. If I'm exploring a repo, I'd like to get the big picture of the directory layout, and also have an easy way to click around to look at the various directories. As it is, I have to do a lot of back and forth. Google Code had this from the beginning. Edit: Thank you everyone for the helpful replies! I learned some great tips from you all.
- fratlas 10y ago
  I actually prefer the "time since" method. Don't have to do date maths in your head to see how active the repo/file is.
- haukur 10y ago
  > Fix the display for code that indents with tabs. Hidden feature: you can actually add ?ts=2 (or 4) to the URL. It would be nice to be able to configure it, though.
celim307 10y ago
same reason i like npm 'run this in your browser' feature. lets u play around with the actual implementation
beliu 10y ago
Check out Sourcegraph: web source tree browsing with jump to def, find refs, and a bunch of other intelligent features. For example, try diving into the Go std lib: https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/golang/go/-/blob/src/net/http/client.go#L388:18-388:21 https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/golang/go/-/blob/src/net/... (Disclaimer: I'm one of the creators. We currently only support Go officially, but other languages soon on the way via the open-source Language Server Protocol standard. Also, big fans of GitHub and glad to see this move!)
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> with OK search As far as I can tell, Gitlab (still) doesn't have search within repo. It's one of the most useful features on Github for me; often I want to see the definition or uses of some symbol without having to clone the repo. I don't understand why Gitlab doesn't seem to support it.
- jackyb 10y ago
  I just tried on my Gitlab 8.16 and it seems to be able to do that. If you go to the Code tab, it shows snippets of files that contain the search term.
- daxelrod 10y ago
  It does, but I believe you need GitLab EE with ElasticSearch turned on: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html
agumonkey 10y ago
I actually dislike their "tree browsing", which is not a tree .. herein lies the problem. What I like in github .. it's a multiformat http file viewer.

by payne92 10y ago

mythz 10y ago

GitHub code search + file navigation is so good, that I prefer it to search/navigate code vs opening a VS.NET sln of a repo already cloned locally.

kzrdude 10y ago
git grep is still much better than github's search, when it comes to code. Github search doesn't show enough when there are many matches in the same file.
- mythz 10y ago
  Not when searching for files, find-as-you-type lets you type the least chars/camelHumpsNotation to quickly find + open files you're looking for and its deep linkability lets you quickly share code fragments with remote devs.
  - notriddle 10y ago
    Ctrl-P in SublimeText.

aub3bhat 10y ago

Could not agree more while I was learning to program, it took me months before realizing that it was possible to Browse a Google Code project online.

gioele 10y ago

> Part of Github's secret sauce: Web source tree browsing that's front and center, that's relatively decent, Plus decent rendering of README.md at the same base URL. You get a decent homepage for your project by just pushing your repo. I wish GitLab just copied the base project page of GitHub.

sytse 10y ago
We're thinking about adding the file tab to the default view in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26834 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26834
sb8244 10y ago
Going to second this. I love the idea of gitlab but I absolutely cannot enjoy the UI. I have trouble understanding the layout of the project from the base URL. I don't have that problem at all on github. Edit: I'm a fool. I swapped gitlab and bitbucket. BB interface is absolutely bad to me.
- Insanity 10y ago
  Even though you did not mean to say so, I would actually agree that the UI of gitlab is not great either. GitHub's UI/UX is better than Gitlab imo.

tedmiston 10y ago

The "t" key shortcut to do repo wide file search is one off my favorite features.

tyingq 10y ago

I wish github would add an option for a case sensitive search. Tired of getting back ThisThing when I specifically want thisthing (lower case). Also, the search documentation is spread out and seems to be missing guidance on features that are crucial. For example, AND works as you would expect (like: hello AND world), but it isn't mentioned anywhere.

dajohnson89 10y ago
This this this. I would spend so much time on GitHub if the search were better. I'm tempted to say that search is less than OK. I do have a huge Java repo, but I'm usually shocked when I quickly find what im querying for.
- iSnow 10y ago
  Using google and site:github.com? I never use the search on the site...
  - Gracana 10y ago
    And then clicking Tools->Verbatim because google otherwise gives results that are wildly different from what you specify..
    - GrinningFool 10y ago
      I can't believe I've missed this. The quality of my search results at google has been steadily going downhill, and I'm often left with a thought along the lines of, "But if you just searched for only the words I used..." Anyway, thanks for posting it!
      - dajohnson89 10y ago
        There should be a search mode for IT professionals. That way, things like curly braces, numbers, and non-words are still treated as meaningful.

yomly 10y ago

Even just being able to browse code when I'm on the go on my phone is useful! I am guilty of occasionally even viewing my own projects on github to avoid having to put down what I'm doing to check what's in production...

trevor-e 10y ago
It's unfortunate that their mobile site is very watered down compared to desktop. Every time I view something on my phone I have to request the desktop version of the site.
- yomly 10y ago
  agree - I do the same too.
- metaobject 10y ago
  I do that for every site i can think of because, as a person with very poor eyesight, the ability to zoom seems better on desktop-site pages than on mobile-site pages.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    On iOS, Safari Reader helps solve this problem on text heavy pages. I crank the font size up to 16–18px with white text on black background.
  - kevincox 10y ago
    Firefox mobile (at least on Android) has an option that prevents sites from disabling zooming in.
    - Gracana 10y ago
      Chrome also has an accessibility option for this. That discovery solved my problems with a lot of sites.
SamReidHughes 10y ago

Jedd 10y ago

If you're using chrome / chromium, and you don't know already, then you may be cheered to find out about the Octotree extension: https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree

rickycook 10y ago
readme says that it also works in ff and safari
jefffan241 10y ago
Thank you for introducing this to me, that is amazing.

wott 10y ago

> OK search Damn... I can't even manage to figure out how it works. I consider myself extremely lucky when it returns the expected result, and that seldom happens.

Stratoscope 10y ago

> Web source tree browsing that's front and center, that's relatively decent, with OK search. The source browsing feels barely adequate to me. There are so many simple things they could do to make it better. • Show file sizes. When I'm exploring a repo I'm unfamiliar with, one thing that's helpful for me is to get a sense of what the code is like. To do this, I want to look at some of the larger files; that's where I'll probably find the more interesting code. As it is I just click around on random files hoping to find something interesting. • Show real dates instead of the vaguely rounded off "how long ago". If it says "a month ago", well, what is it, two weeks or six? And why not show the time? A couple of times I've been looking for a code change and I didn't remember what day it was but I did remember it was right before lunch, maybe around 11:30 or so. It feels like their priority is a "clean and simple" display as opposed to a useful and informative display. • Fix the display for code that indents with tabs. It still defaults to 8 columns, which hardly anyone (with a few notable exceptions) likes. And you, the user, can't override this. They did recently start honoring the indent_size setting if you have a .editorconfig file, but that really misses the point. Many of us who use tabs don't want to specify an indent_size. That's one of the virtues of tabs: people who read the code can use whatever indentation they prefer. The indent size for tabs should be a user preference setting. As it is, I started adding indent_size=4 to my .editorconfig files just to get a decent looking display on GitHub. • Use a readable font on mobile. Courier, really? And not such low contrast! Everything is hard to read on mobile, and they even disabled pinch-zoom so I can't make the text a little bigger. • Show a directory tree on the left. If I'm exploring a repo, I'd like to get the big picture of the directory layout, and also have an easy way to click around to look at the various directories. As it is, I have to do a lot of back and forth. Google Code had this from the beginning. Edit: Thank you everyone for the helpful replies! I learned some great tips from you all.

fratlas 10y ago
I actually prefer the "time since" method. Don't have to do date maths in your head to see how active the repo/file is.
haukur 10y ago
> Fix the display for code that indents with tabs. Hidden feature: you can actually add ?ts=2 (or 4) to the URL. It would be nice to be able to configure it, though.

celim307 10y ago

same reason i like npm 'run this in your browser' feature. lets u play around with the actual implementation

beliu 10y ago

Check out Sourcegraph: web source tree browsing with jump to def, find refs, and a bunch of other intelligent features. For example, try diving into the Go std lib: https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/golang/go/-/blob/src/net/http/client.go#L388:18-388:21 https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/golang/go/-/blob/src/net/... (Disclaimer: I'm one of the creators. We currently only support Go officially, but other languages soon on the way via the open-source Language Server Protocol standard. Also, big fans of GitHub and glad to see this move!)

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> with OK search As far as I can tell, Gitlab (still) doesn't have search within repo. It's one of the most useful features on Github for me; often I want to see the definition or uses of some symbol without having to clone the repo. I don't understand why Gitlab doesn't seem to support it.

jackyb 10y ago
I just tried on my Gitlab 8.16 and it seems to be able to do that. If you go to the Code tab, it shows snippets of files that contain the search term.
daxelrod 10y ago
It does, but I believe you need GitLab EE with ElasticSearch turned on: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html

agumonkey 10y ago

I actually dislike their "tree browsing", which is not a tree .. herein lies the problem. What I like in github .. it's a multiformat http file viewer.