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Pull Request File Tree Feedback

103 points by isbadawi 5y ago

politelemon 5y ago
Bitbucket Server and Gitlab have this feature and it's quite useful for very large pull requests as you can easily see the folder structure of the file you're reviewing, for that bit extra bit of visual context. Bitbucket's search box is slightly better because it also does a code search within the PR, it helps you quickly find specific words (say, a class name) across all the changed files. Gitlab's only does a file name filter. Though relatively late, I am glad it's coming to Github, more people can benefit from this kind of pull request presentation.
- mrrsm 5y ago
  If only Bitbucket Cloud would play catchup now. So many times I read about a bitbucket feature to only find out it is server only and we can't use it.
  - sam_bristow 5y ago
    I believe Bitbucket Cloud and Bitbucket Server/Datacenter (nee Stash) are still two completely separate codebases that just happen to share a name.
    - politelemon 5y ago
      And, probably for worse, Atlassian is ending support for server in favour of their worse cloud version. https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud There's still data center version but it's priced expensive to discourage you.
- wdb 5y ago
  Gitlab and big PR aren't a great experience. Impossible to scroll -- it's so slow
dandigangi 5y ago
One of the few things worth actually stealing from BitBucket. Lol
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Since GitHub is owned by Microsoft and their other product has had this, I’m guessing it’s yet another copy-over like GitHub Actions was from Azure Pipelines. Not sure how long it’s been in AzureDevOps but it could have been inspired from GitLab there I suppose.
  - RyJones 5y ago
    ADO will go away once all of the features are migrated to GitHub.
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      I wouldn't mind if they converged the products tbh, but there are quite a lot of things yet to migrate I think. An extensive process thing with easy ways to hook in for doing processes and reports would be much better than what ADO does now with an extremely complex model that you invariably still need to customize with extensions and hooks.
ydnaclementine 5y ago
Not sure if this is well known, but press period `.` when viewing a PR, repo, or file and github will send you to a in-browser visual code editor. Able to make commits in there too, perfect for [nit] comments
- guessmyname 5y ago
  Yes, that is a well known feature introduced last year. I saw hundreds of people talking about it on Twitter and here on Hacker News. Link for people who didn’t know about this feature: https://mobile.twitter.com/github/status/1425505817827151872 https://mobile.twitter.com/github/status/1425505817827151872 and the official documentation with other keyboard shortcuts: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-github/keyboard-shortcuts https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-github/keyboard...
  - robbyking 5y ago
    I didn't know about it! I primary use a corporate hosted instance GitHub (so we often opt in to new features late), and I don't follow a lot of tech news on social media.
  - rat9988 5y ago
    That doesn't make it well known though
- gfody 5y ago
  if you press it from a PR you'll get the vscode PR viewer which is way nicer than Github's (IMO, especially for larger PRs) the only thing missing is the ability to switch between changes from last commit, last review, etc.
- 88913527 5y ago
  I often use `t` to quickly search for a file by name. It's got reasonably good matching: querying for "foo.svg" will show a match for "foobarbaz.svg".
eat_veggies 5y ago
I've been using the Octo Tree extension for this, but it's so great to have it built-in !
OliverGilan 5y ago
Funny but Azure Repos actually has had this feature for a while. When I first joined Microsoft I was shocked that all our teams used Azure Repos instead of GitHub considering we own GitHub but as I've used Repos more and more I've actually come to like it more than GitHub itself. A lot of the UI is cleaner and more intuitive than GitHub to me now, maybe just from using it a lot.
- carstenhag 5y ago
  Agree, I really prefer DevOps' PR experience. I'm just missing the easy GitHub ci Integrations (3rd party checks & bots that post comments for example). It probably also exists for DevOps, but I never came across of it
- oneepic 5y ago
  +1. I had the same experience joining Microsoft. I wasn't super thrilled by Azure at first, but was surprised by how much functionality it had. Fast forward a couple years later, I moved to another big tech company using Github instead, which had setup integrations with a bunch of different external tools (and this one was no slouch when it comes to engineering tooling). I can't tell you how much I missed Azure, even though I've had my issues with MSFT.
- voidfunc 5y ago
  Azure DevOps is a very solid product in general. That said, the whole work items UI is terrible and inferior to the GitHub issue’s system. Too complex.
obilgic 5y ago
Back in the day I created something similar for CLI, which lets you diff any change in tree format. https://github.com/oguzbilgic/tiri https://github.com/oguzbilgic/tiri
BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
Display performance switching between files in Safari is terrible on very large PRs. I don't know what it could be doing. Maybe something to do with text reflow? But it's almost unusable.
eloisius 5y ago
I’d settle for them making PRs as useful as they were in 2015, before they messed up some of the most basic functionality: showing the diff, and showing review comments. They hide big diffs behind a “load more” link, and as a result people often fail to code review the most substantial part of a change because they scan right past it, thinking it’s a removed file or binary or something. Then, once you submit a review, they only show 10 comments. In the middle, there’s an easy-to-miss “load more comments” button. These are the two most fundamental features of a PR. How could they decide so few as 10 is the right number of comments?
- humanwhosits 5y ago
  Hiding of the large files has tripped me up multiple times. I've starting having to look at the diffs outside github's UI
- inetknght 5y ago
  > They hide big diffs behind a “load more” link, and as a result people often fail to code review the most substantial part of a change because they scan right past it, thinking it’s a removed file or binary or something. This. Every PR I have to do ctrl-F "load diff" and then immediately click on _all_ of the diffs. It's !@#$ing annoying. I've also lost comments when the comment is part of a review and pushed to the PR after the the PR has been merged by someone else.
  - corndoge 5y ago
    Might be worth making a bounty for it in refined github[0], similar things have been implemented in the past[1] [0] https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github [1] https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github/issues/2151 https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github/issues/2151
    - inetknght 5y ago
      wtf is refined github? A browser extension? Nah, I value my browser more than that
svnpenn 5y ago
What's ironic is that discussion pages, like the one linked here, are broken on mobile. Maybe they should focus on that first. Also, I hate repos that convert issues to discussions. Might as well close the issue, as discussion is usually a graveyard.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Why is closing better? Either means 'maintainer won't do anything' (beyond perhaps charitably helping you out) 'Moved to discussion' seems better to me than 'closed; tagged question'.
  - mushyhammer 5y ago
    > seems better That’s why they do it, but what they’re doing is essentially rejecting the request. If it’s a question, sure, but if it’s a feature request or worse yet a bug report then moving to discussions is bs.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Sure, but isn't reject + allowing discussion (e.g. from other users, or maybe a maintainer will chip in) better than reject + nothing, a closed undiscoverable issue or worse locked?
croddin 5y ago
That seems very useful for large pull requests. GitHub is starting to look more and more like VS Code.
- other_herbert 5y ago
  Just wait till you hit . On your keyboard
  - eloisius 5y ago
    Is this why the UI had become so slow and bloated feeling? A massive IDE in the browser? I hate how every tech company finally arrives at a stage where they do everything to keep you on the platform. I won’t even be surprised if some time before 2030 the phase out Git entirely and rename it Microsoft Visual VCS, only accessible by writing code in their Electron text editor or directly in the browser.
lh15 5y ago
This is why I’ve enjoyed using Bitbucket more than GitHub. Nice to see github adding it
jameslao 5y ago
If anyone is interested, I've been building a code review tool called Crocodile[0] that lets you review GitHub PRs. It has a similar file browser to the left plus floating comments, threaded discussions, and more. [0] https://www.crocodile.dev/ https://www.crocodile.dev/
- eloisius 5y ago
  Just casually following this thread, this is the third SaaS I've seen offering an alternative code review tool to supplement GitHub. It's either sorely needed to make up for how bad GitHub is, or it's true that we engineers can't help but makes tools for people exactly like ourselves.
  - jameslao 5y ago
    Probably a mix of both. Many of the founders of code review tools came from companies that had internal code review tools (Microsoft has CodeFlow, Google has Critique, Facebook has Phabricator) and they missed those tools after leaving those companies.
duxup 5y ago
I like it as a quick glance on generally what is up. I don’t like scrolling until I see “holy cow wat”.
tomasreimers 5y ago
Hi! I am one of the authors of https://graphite.dev https://graphite.dev, we are basically a really fancy client to GH that lets you review others PRs without making them change their workflow at all (posts everything to GH etc) We've had a file tree for some time now (along with some of the other feedback I'm seeing in this thread, large diffs etc). If anyone wants to give it a spin, happy to give you an invite :)
- brainbag 5y ago
  I've been looking for something like this for weeks. Seems fantastic. How do I get that invite?
  - jacobegold 5y ago
    Send an email (from the address you use to sign into GitHub!) to jacob@graphite.dev :)
williamscales 5y ago
This kills the Octotree.
codeapprove 5y ago
noname120 5y ago
I'm currently using Octotree[1]. It has more features than this proposed GitHub implementation. Namely, files have icons, count of added/removed lines is displayed inline, comments are displayed inline (super easy to jump from comment to comment), etc. For now I'll keep using Octotree but I'm curious of the direction this implementation will take. [1] https://www.octotree.io/ https://www.octotree.io/
radicality 5y ago
After many years at Facebook I’ve recently switched jobs and have to use GitHub now for work. Compared to Phabricator (FB’s code review tool), the GitHub code review (and code merge) processes seems extremely basic and clunky.
- jacobegold 5y ago
  Try out Graphite! Half of us are ex-FB, so we get it. https://graphite.dev/ https://graphite.dev/
  - radicality 5y ago
    That looks cool, I put my work and personal emails on the waitlist! GitHub review is just… awful Side-note: I took a look at the ‘About’ page thinking ‘Hey, they said ex-FB, extremely unlikely but maybe i know someone’. Looking at your username I’m guessing you’re jacob gold and worked on messaging infra in NY. I used to work on Iris! Small world.
    - jacobegold 5y ago
      So funny :) I was on storage but was "moonlighting" on Iris for my last couple months at FB — what a small world! Feel free to shoot me an email if you don't want to wait, although the list moves fairly quickly these days.
- jameslao 5y ago
  I'm also working on a code review app called Crocodile that addresses GitHub's shortcomings. Signups are open and feedback is always appreciated. https://www.crocodile.dev https://www.crocodile.dev
marceloabsousa 5y ago
If you don't want just a tree but also a semantic diff that tells you what types and methods where actually changed check out Reviewpad (http://reviewpad.com http://reviewpad.com).

103 points by isbadawi 5y ago

Bitbucket Server and Gitlab have this feature and it's quite useful for very large pull requests as you can easily see the folder structure of the file you're reviewing, for that bit extra bit of visual context. Bitbucket's search box is slightly better because it also does a code search within the PR, it helps you quickly find specific words (say, a class name) across all the changed files. Gitlab's only does a file name filter. Though relatively late, I am glad it's coming to Github, more people can benefit from this kind of pull request presentation.

mrrsm 5y ago
If only Bitbucket Cloud would play catchup now. So many times I read about a bitbucket feature to only find out it is server only and we can't use it.
- sam_bristow 5y ago
  I believe Bitbucket Cloud and Bitbucket Server/Datacenter (nee Stash) are still two completely separate codebases that just happen to share a name.
  - politelemon 5y ago
    And, probably for worse, Atlassian is ending support for server in favour of their worse cloud version. https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud There's still data center version but it's priced expensive to discourage you.
wdb 5y ago
Gitlab and big PR aren't a great experience. Impossible to scroll -- it's so slow

dandigangi 5y ago

One of the few things worth actually stealing from BitBucket. Lol

alkonaut 5y ago
Since GitHub is owned by Microsoft and their other product has had this, I’m guessing it’s yet another copy-over like GitHub Actions was from Azure Pipelines. Not sure how long it’s been in AzureDevOps but it could have been inspired from GitLab there I suppose.
- RyJones 5y ago
  ADO will go away once all of the features are migrated to GitHub.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    I wouldn't mind if they converged the products tbh, but there are quite a lot of things yet to migrate I think. An extensive process thing with easy ways to hook in for doing processes and reports would be much better than what ADO does now with an extremely complex model that you invariably still need to customize with extensions and hooks.

ydnaclementine 5y ago

Not sure if this is well known, but press period `.` when viewing a PR, repo, or file and github will send you to a in-browser visual code editor. Able to make commits in there too, perfect for [nit] comments

guessmyname 5y ago
Yes, that is a well known feature introduced last year. I saw hundreds of people talking about it on Twitter and here on Hacker News. Link for people who didn’t know about this feature: https://mobile.twitter.com/github/status/1425505817827151872 https://mobile.twitter.com/github/status/1425505817827151872 and the official documentation with other keyboard shortcuts: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-github/keyboard-shortcuts https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-github/keyboard...
- robbyking 5y ago
  I didn't know about it! I primary use a corporate hosted instance GitHub (so we often opt in to new features late), and I don't follow a lot of tech news on social media.
- rat9988 5y ago
  That doesn't make it well known though
gfody 5y ago
if you press it from a PR you'll get the vscode PR viewer which is way nicer than Github's (IMO, especially for larger PRs) the only thing missing is the ability to switch between changes from last commit, last review, etc.
88913527 5y ago
I often use `t` to quickly search for a file by name. It's got reasonably good matching: querying for "foo.svg" will show a match for "foobarbaz.svg".

eat_veggies 5y ago

I've been using the Octo Tree extension for this, but it's so great to have it built-in !

OliverGilan 5y ago

Funny but Azure Repos actually has had this feature for a while. When I first joined Microsoft I was shocked that all our teams used Azure Repos instead of GitHub considering we own GitHub but as I've used Repos more and more I've actually come to like it more than GitHub itself. A lot of the UI is cleaner and more intuitive than GitHub to me now, maybe just from using it a lot.

carstenhag 5y ago
Agree, I really prefer DevOps' PR experience. I'm just missing the easy GitHub ci Integrations (3rd party checks & bots that post comments for example). It probably also exists for DevOps, but I never came across of it
oneepic 5y ago
+1. I had the same experience joining Microsoft. I wasn't super thrilled by Azure at first, but was surprised by how much functionality it had. Fast forward a couple years later, I moved to another big tech company using Github instead, which had setup integrations with a bunch of different external tools (and this one was no slouch when it comes to engineering tooling). I can't tell you how much I missed Azure, even though I've had my issues with MSFT.
voidfunc 5y ago
Azure DevOps is a very solid product in general. That said, the whole work items UI is terrible and inferior to the GitHub issue’s system. Too complex.

obilgic 5y ago

Back in the day I created something similar for CLI, which lets you diff any change in tree format. https://github.com/oguzbilgic/tiri https://github.com/oguzbilgic/tiri

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago

Display performance switching between files in Safari is terrible on very large PRs. I don't know what it could be doing. Maybe something to do with text reflow? But it's almost unusable.

eloisius 5y ago

I’d settle for them making PRs as useful as they were in 2015, before they messed up some of the most basic functionality: showing the diff, and showing review comments. They hide big diffs behind a “load more” link, and as a result people often fail to code review the most substantial part of a change because they scan right past it, thinking it’s a removed file or binary or something. Then, once you submit a review, they only show 10 comments. In the middle, there’s an easy-to-miss “load more comments” button. These are the two most fundamental features of a PR. How could they decide so few as 10 is the right number of comments?

humanwhosits 5y ago
Hiding of the large files has tripped me up multiple times. I've starting having to look at the diffs outside github's UI
inetknght 5y ago
> They hide big diffs behind a “load more” link, and as a result people often fail to code review the most substantial part of a change because they scan right past it, thinking it’s a removed file or binary or something. This. Every PR I have to do ctrl-F "load diff" and then immediately click on _all_ of the diffs. It's !@#$ing annoying. I've also lost comments when the comment is part of a review and pushed to the PR after the the PR has been merged by someone else.
- corndoge 5y ago
  Might be worth making a bounty for it in refined github[0], similar things have been implemented in the past[1] [0] https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github [1] https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github/issues/2151 https://github.com/refined-github/refined-github/issues/2151
  - inetknght 5y ago
    wtf is refined github? A browser extension? Nah, I value my browser more than that

svnpenn 5y ago

What's ironic is that discussion pages, like the one linked here, are broken on mobile. Maybe they should focus on that first. Also, I hate repos that convert issues to discussions. Might as well close the issue, as discussion is usually a graveyard.

OJFord 5y ago
Why is closing better? Either means 'maintainer won't do anything' (beyond perhaps charitably helping you out) 'Moved to discussion' seems better to me than 'closed; tagged question'.
- mushyhammer 5y ago
  > seems better That’s why they do it, but what they’re doing is essentially rejecting the request. If it’s a question, sure, but if it’s a feature request or worse yet a bug report then moving to discussions is bs.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Sure, but isn't reject + allowing discussion (e.g. from other users, or maybe a maintainer will chip in) better than reject + nothing, a closed undiscoverable issue or worse locked?

croddin 5y ago

That seems very useful for large pull requests. GitHub is starting to look more and more like VS Code.

other_herbert 5y ago
Just wait till you hit . On your keyboard
- eloisius 5y ago
  Is this why the UI had become so slow and bloated feeling? A massive IDE in the browser? I hate how every tech company finally arrives at a stage where they do everything to keep you on the platform. I won’t even be surprised if some time before 2030 the phase out Git entirely and rename it Microsoft Visual VCS, only accessible by writing code in their Electron text editor or directly in the browser.

lh15 5y ago

This is why I’ve enjoyed using Bitbucket more than GitHub. Nice to see github adding it

jameslao 5y ago

If anyone is interested, I've been building a code review tool called Crocodile[0] that lets you review GitHub PRs. It has a similar file browser to the left plus floating comments, threaded discussions, and more. [0] https://www.crocodile.dev/ https://www.crocodile.dev/

eloisius 5y ago
Just casually following this thread, this is the third SaaS I've seen offering an alternative code review tool to supplement GitHub. It's either sorely needed to make up for how bad GitHub is, or it's true that we engineers can't help but makes tools for people exactly like ourselves.
- jameslao 5y ago
  Probably a mix of both. Many of the founders of code review tools came from companies that had internal code review tools (Microsoft has CodeFlow, Google has Critique, Facebook has Phabricator) and they missed those tools after leaving those companies.

duxup 5y ago

I like it as a quick glance on generally what is up. I don’t like scrolling until I see “holy cow wat”.

tomasreimers 5y ago

Hi! I am one of the authors of https://graphite.dev https://graphite.dev, we are basically a really fancy client to GH that lets you review others PRs without making them change their workflow at all (posts everything to GH etc) We've had a file tree for some time now (along with some of the other feedback I'm seeing in this thread, large diffs etc). If anyone wants to give it a spin, happy to give you an invite :)

brainbag 5y ago
I've been looking for something like this for weeks. Seems fantastic. How do I get that invite?
- jacobegold 5y ago
  Send an email (from the address you use to sign into GitHub!) to jacob@graphite.dev :)

williamscales 5y ago

This kills the Octotree.

codeapprove 5y ago

noname120 5y ago

I'm currently using Octotree[1]. It has more features than this proposed GitHub implementation. Namely, files have icons, count of added/removed lines is displayed inline, comments are displayed inline (super easy to jump from comment to comment), etc. For now I'll keep using Octotree but I'm curious of the direction this implementation will take. [1] https://www.octotree.io/ https://www.octotree.io/

radicality 5y ago

After many years at Facebook I’ve recently switched jobs and have to use GitHub now for work. Compared to Phabricator (FB’s code review tool), the GitHub code review (and code merge) processes seems extremely basic and clunky.

jacobegold 5y ago
Try out Graphite! Half of us are ex-FB, so we get it. https://graphite.dev/ https://graphite.dev/
- radicality 5y ago
  That looks cool, I put my work and personal emails on the waitlist! GitHub review is just… awful Side-note: I took a look at the ‘About’ page thinking ‘Hey, they said ex-FB, extremely unlikely but maybe i know someone’. Looking at your username I’m guessing you’re jacob gold and worked on messaging infra in NY. I used to work on Iris! Small world.
  - jacobegold 5y ago
    So funny :) I was on storage but was "moonlighting" on Iris for my last couple months at FB — what a small world! Feel free to shoot me an email if you don't want to wait, although the list moves fairly quickly these days.
jameslao 5y ago
I'm also working on a code review app called Crocodile that addresses GitHub's shortcomings. Signups are open and feedback is always appreciated. https://www.crocodile.dev https://www.crocodile.dev

marceloabsousa 5y ago

If you don't want just a tree but also a semantic diff that tells you what types and methods where actually changed check out Reviewpad (http://reviewpad.com http://reviewpad.com).