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Bug 292592

Summary: Sharing wizard has usability issues
Product: [Technology] EGit Reporter: Remy Suen <remy.suen>
Component: UIAssignee: Matthias Sohn <matthias.sohn>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: P3 CC: matthias.sohn, mn
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
Bug Depends on: 291303    
Bug Blocks:    
Attachments:
Description Flags
Another implementation none

Description Remy Suen CLA 2009-10-16 22:28:58 EDT 
1. Select a project that is not under version control.
2. Bring up the context menu > Team > Share...
3. Select 'Git' > Next
4. Select the project. Click 'Create...'.
5. Control is immediately returned to the user without additional input.

Having an ellipsis in the button's text gives users the assumption that something "more" is going to happen. It is very common for user interfaces in Eclipse to have a list of items with three buttons on its side 'Add...', 'Edit...', and 'Remove'. It's clear to the user that the 'Remove' button will just wipe the entries but the other two cases generally require additional input from the user and the ellipsis help convey this to them. Usually, this is in the form of a dialog wherein the user has to complete if adding or it is prepopulated with the item's original properties which will be modified by the user. Anyway, I hope I'm making some sense here.

I would suggest removing the ellipsis and maybe even relabeling the button to say 'Create Repository' to make it more obvious to the user what the button is going to do.

Another problem I see with the dialog is the disabled '/.git' text. I don't know about other windowing systems but on Linux/gtk+ it's kind of hard for me to read here. I'd suggest just using an enabled Label widget instead. Ideally, I think the text should be embedded into the Text control itself and automatically appended to the entry but I guess that might be more work than its worth what with having to parse paths and other indexOf/substring magic.

I think the ideal user interface would be...

Repository location: [_/home/user/git-ws/egit/.git_____________] [ Create ]

...but it's probably best to take baby steps. Besides, this is just my opinion. I don't know what the EGit developers think. :P
Comment 1 Remy Suen CLA 2009-10-17 15:19:20 EDT 
Another option might be to just let the user set all the paths and the 'Finish' button to actually do the folder generation (instead of clicking the button individually for each project in question).
Comment 2 Mykola Nikishov CLA 2009-10-17 16:30:51 EDT 
Just to make sure we are on the same page: what EGit version are you using? This dialog's logic was broken, see bug 291303.
Comment 3 Remy Suen CLA 2009-10-17 16:41:15 EDT 
(In reply to comment #2)
> Just to make sure we are on the same page: what EGit version are you using?
> This dialog's logic was broken, see bug 291303.

I tested with code from yesterday night (Eastern Daylight Time). I imported the code into my workspace then launched a new/runtime Eclipse for testing purposes.
Comment 4 Mykola Nikishov CLA 2009-10-17 18:30:05 EDT 
(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Just to make sure we are on the same page: what EGit version are you using?
> > This dialog's logic was broken, see bug 291303.
> 
> I tested with code from yesterday night (Eastern Daylight Time). I imported the
> code into my workspace then launched a new/runtime Eclipse for testing
> purposes.

Ok, if you have this commit

commit dcd861db6f364c9c41a2409fd90ad2f91bcd7f54
Author: Mykola Nikishov <mn@mn.com.ua>
Date:   Mon Oct 5 00:51:16 2009 +0300

do not try to share a project nested into existed git repository, it is still broken. But it will work for a not-nested projects. I reopened bug 291303.
Comment 5 Mykola Nikishov CLA 2009-10-19 05:00:59 EDT 
BTW, please take a look at article about using the EGit Eclipse Plugin with GitHub, http://github.com/guides/using-the-egit-eclipse-plugin-with-github. Section '2: Make Eclipse aware of the project’s Gitness' describes this workflow but in a slightly different way. I don't know where does this implementation come from but it looks much better from the end-user's point of view.
Comment 6 Mykola Nikishov CLA 2009-10-19 05:06:26 EDT 
Created attachment 149851 [details]
Another implementation

from http://github.com/guides/using-the-egit-eclipse-plugin-with-github
Comment 7 Matthias Sohn CLA 2010-01-04 21:46:20 EST 
Patch posted to Gerrit : http://egit.eclipse.org/r/#change,173
Comment 8 Matthias Sohn CLA 2010-01-14 11:45:49 EST 
merged with egit commit 1f01c420bf94681560d2ab2153728305767576ef