Bug 118499

Description Adam Hawthorne 2005-11-29 15:12:53 EST

It would be helpful to enable the Team -> Create Patch context menu option when multiple resources are selected in the Navigator.  The problem of knowing the patch root directory (the level) could be addressed by adding a directory selector control to the Create Patch dialog that allows the user to select the root directory.

This addresses several usability issues:
1. It's currently impossible to create patches containing a subset of the currently modified resources when a directory containing members of the subset also contains non-members.
2. Currently, since resources cannot be selected, the user has to select a containing directory from which to create the patch.  The CVS diff has to consider all files beneath a selected directory, which can be slow over a thin pipe.  Being able to select multiple resources allows the user to limit the scope of the diff.
3. The root of the patch is determined from the folder selected in the navigator.  This confers onto the task of selecting a folder two semantic roles when doing a "Create Patch":  one, to select the group of resources, and two, to select the root folder for that patch.  Especially in the case that the user desires to save multiple patches, it's beneficial to choose the same patch root directory for all created patches.  In this case, the desired root directory and the desired resources are much less tightly coupled than the interface allows.  The patch root selection is only required to be a parent directory of the selected folder.