[Monotone-devel] Re: Perhaps strange request: partial per-file commit

[Lapo Luchini]

Ralf S. Engelschall wrote:
> Sorry, in case this seems too strange for most of you, but it a
> "problem" I'm faced with mostly every day and I really would appreciate
> some additional support from Monotone. Let me describe...

In fact that happens to me often enough, too.
(and right now I'm usually using "cp + nano" which is far worse that you
are doing already)

> so what I would like to have is (assuming that only
> hunks 2 and 4 in file11==file21 are for change2) something like this:
> 
>     $ mtn ci -m "description of logical change1" file11:-2,-4 ... file1N

...this syntax is not very intuitive to me, though: you have no idea
what "chunk numbers" are, before you do a diff... and even if you do,
chunks are not numbered, so it may be difficult to count them.

Of course, those are problems that can (and probably should) be solved
by a GUI with colored diff and a mouse interface to "click to deselect
chunks" or something like that ;-)

But well... not strictly related, but if I continue that "colored diff"
branch of mine... stretching the idea (MUCH) further... in an ideal
world we could:
a) mtn commit --interactive
b) an index like "mtn status" is shown
c) you can move around with arrows and hit enter to see the (colored)
diff of the specific file
d) move around with arrows and select/deselect chunks
e) press ESC to return to the index, seeing now the list decorated with
something like ("filename changed [2/6 chunks selected]")
f) confirm the commit, write the commit log, actually commit it

    Lapo