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Magit changed how I commit by making it much easier to split up changes. (I'm sure another gui would work well) Edit: I think a buffer of lines you navigate is

Magit changed how I commit by making it much easier to split up changes. (I'm sure another gui would work well) Edit: I think a buffer of lines you navigate is just the right metaphor for working with a bunch of text. It's why line editors are generally considered obsolete.

nitrogen 6y ago
git add -p works quite well from the CLI.
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  I'm glad it works for you. For me there's a crucial jump in fluency of using something graphical to select lines that makes willing to be more precise. I think a buffer of lines you navigate is just the right metaphor for working with a bunch of text. It's why line editors are generally considered obsolete.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Sorry, that comment was pre-caffeine and it probably seemed like I was dissing on the GUI. I meant to suggest git add -p as an option for those who don't want to use Magit or similar, or as an intermediate step between git add . and a GUI diffing tool. Git add -p is still pretty useful for reviewing individual changes, but slicing finer than that, or editing patchsets directly as text, is definitely a dark art, but one that I'm glad that I have learned through repeated trial and error (e.g. recognizing that the first column must always be a space, plus, or minus). I would probably have added to my prior comment that a specialized diff editor paired with git add -p might be more useful than doing so with a usual text editor.
    - iudqnolq 6y ago
      No problem. That all makes sense.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      As a further option, there is also git add -i which is not a great UX and it has its own weird DSL with oddities, but still a slightly "higher level" than git add -p for when people need or want something less fine-grained than git add -p from the command line without installing another git porcelain. git add -i lets you get the status of files in the working directory, add entire files, revert entire files, or patch individual files, all from a single UI "session". You can do all of the same stuff with appropriate pathspecs to the individual commands such as git add -p just/one/file-i-need.md, but git add -i is an option for those that want an "almost GUI" for that.
masklinn 6y ago
> I'm sure another gui would work well I'm not, I've not seen anything else like magit's diff views: they provide a great overview of the entire state (of the working copy or staging area) and allow very fine and nonlinear staging/unstaging. While technically `git add -p` provides the same capabilities, magit's allowance for jumping around and staging and unstaging (and reverting / killing) as you wish and go is a huge boon, it requires significantly less pre-planning and remembering that `git add -p`'s linear and blinkered (one hunk at a time) workflow The only thing that I've not found perfect is reverting parts of an existing commit (e.g. re-reading your log you realise that you added debugging crap to a commit): magit will create a staged revert and an unstaged re-add, which is nice to move stuff out of a commit but a bit confusing for straight reverting it. And even that is still miles ahead of everything else I know of. The only thing magit is lacking is fixing interactive rebases: it beats the pants off of doing interactive rebases manually, but i'd like it to compute "dependencies" between patches so it stops me from moving a patch above its dependency, or at least tells me beforehand (as that usually generates huge conflicts which would be better handled by not moving the patches that way because it's an error, or splitting the patch being moved beforehand).
- hibbelig 6y ago
  I find that Lazygit provides a nice UI for staging, too: You can state an entire file or just lines(!) from a file. I wish it allowed me to stage a hunk, too. But I make do with staging all lines from that hunk. It is not a lot more effort.
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  I prefer magit to other but GUIs, but I think selecting changes is the area it's comparatively weakest (compared to other GUIs, it's far ahead of -p). I'd like a better way to use a mouse, and a way to only commit parts of lines (I know this would involve non-trivial workarounds, but that's why I'm using a git porcelain). Edit: I also dislike hunks, they never correspond to what I want reliably. Another annoyance is I think magit is quite good at the low level selection in general, but it's hard to get a high level overview because I'm always collapsing and un-collapsing things.

nitrogen 6y ago

git add -p works quite well from the CLI.

iudqnolq 6y ago
I'm glad it works for you. For me there's a crucial jump in fluency of using something graphical to select lines that makes willing to be more precise. I think a buffer of lines you navigate is just the right metaphor for working with a bunch of text. It's why line editors are generally considered obsolete.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Sorry, that comment was pre-caffeine and it probably seemed like I was dissing on the GUI. I meant to suggest git add -p as an option for those who don't want to use Magit or similar, or as an intermediate step between git add . and a GUI diffing tool. Git add -p is still pretty useful for reviewing individual changes, but slicing finer than that, or editing patchsets directly as text, is definitely a dark art, but one that I'm glad that I have learned through repeated trial and error (e.g. recognizing that the first column must always be a space, plus, or minus). I would probably have added to my prior comment that a specialized diff editor paired with git add -p might be more useful than doing so with a usual text editor.
  - iudqnolq 6y ago
    No problem. That all makes sense.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    As a further option, there is also git add -i which is not a great UX and it has its own weird DSL with oddities, but still a slightly "higher level" than git add -p for when people need or want something less fine-grained than git add -p from the command line without installing another git porcelain. git add -i lets you get the status of files in the working directory, add entire files, revert entire files, or patch individual files, all from a single UI "session". You can do all of the same stuff with appropriate pathspecs to the individual commands such as git add -p just/one/file-i-need.md, but git add -i is an option for those that want an "almost GUI" for that.

masklinn 6y ago

> I'm sure another gui would work well I'm not, I've not seen anything else like magit's diff views: they provide a great overview of the entire state (of the working copy or staging area) and allow very fine and nonlinear staging/unstaging. While technically `git add -p` provides the same capabilities, magit's allowance for jumping around and staging and unstaging (and reverting / killing) as you wish and go is a huge boon, it requires significantly less pre-planning and remembering that `git add -p`'s linear and blinkered (one hunk at a time) workflow The only thing that I've not found perfect is reverting parts of an existing commit (e.g. re-reading your log you realise that you added debugging crap to a commit): magit will create a staged revert and an unstaged re-add, which is nice to move stuff out of a commit but a bit confusing for straight reverting it. And even that is still miles ahead of everything else I know of. The only thing magit is lacking is fixing interactive rebases: it beats the pants off of doing interactive rebases manually, but i'd like it to compute "dependencies" between patches so it stops me from moving a patch above its dependency, or at least tells me beforehand (as that usually generates huge conflicts which would be better handled by not moving the patches that way because it's an error, or splitting the patch being moved beforehand).

hibbelig 6y ago
I find that Lazygit provides a nice UI for staging, too: You can state an entire file or just lines(!) from a file. I wish it allowed me to stage a hunk, too. But I make do with staging all lines from that hunk. It is not a lot more effort.
iudqnolq 6y ago
I prefer magit to other but GUIs, but I think selecting changes is the area it's comparatively weakest (compared to other GUIs, it's far ahead of -p). I'd like a better way to use a mouse, and a way to only commit parts of lines (I know this would involve non-trivial workarounds, but that's why I'm using a git porcelain). Edit: I also dislike hunks, they never correspond to what I want reliably. Another annoyance is I think magit is quite good at the low level selection in general, but it's hard to get a high level overview because I'm always collapsing and un-collapsing things.