Description Maxime Daniel 2006-05-19 04:29:10 EDT

3.2 RC4
One scenario I often come accross is the following is:
- modifify a file; (build, run, launch tests...);
- file (or project) team commit; the commit dialog pops up;
- start typing a comment (say 'HEAD - modified comment for ');
- would love to be able to select the method name from the editor or any other view but have to type it in instead because the dialog is modal.

There may be a better way to do that, and I'll be glad to hear of it if it is in the tool.

Assuming not, the workaround I've found so far is to plan a little bit more and to copy the needed elements from the source before committing... But I most often happen to miss it! Moreover, this does not cope that well with multiple copy paste actions.

I believe that enabling more interaction between the commit dialog and the remainder of the workbench would promote better commit comments. And rich commit comments help quite a bit in the history view (IMHO).

Discussion a bit the topic with Frédéric, we came up with the following suggestions (assuming that a non modal commit dialog would'nt be the killer option here for a lot of reasons):
- storing the latest comment entered in the history, even when the user cancels the commit; this would ease the 'start committing, type comment, cancel, navigate and copy, restart committing, paste' scenario by suppressing the need to type the comment again;
- better, 'suspending' the commit action would enable to navigate, copy text, browse the code to think again about what to add to the comment, then 'resuming' the commit action would automate for the user the 'select what to commit, apply the commit command, start typing the comment'; of course, initiating another regular commit command would cancel the previous one.