Productivity and debugging idea: "session"-tracking system similar to code version tracking systems

[David Nolden]

2011/8/12 Andreas Pakulat <apaku at gmx.de>:
> On 12.08.11 17:04:53, Michael Andersson wrote:
>> I realise that when presenting the idea it sounded like I was asking for
>> already existing things. Perhaps it is difficult to see the utility of my
>> suggestion from my story without having been me with my bug at that
>> particular time. In my case the changes, consequences, and potential
>> positions of the bug reached over a significant number of files, making it
>> difficult to overview.
>>
>> In short, what I am proposing boils down to two capabilities inside the IDE:
>>
>> 1) Being able to set a "revert point" before setting out on a journey of
>> changes.
>
> git checkout journey
>
>> 2) Being able to view a single-page digest in a tab of all changes since the
>> revert point.
>
> git diff origin...journey
>
> Whats missing in KDevelop I guess is the 'digest', i.e. a single
> document showing you the diff in a nicely formatted way, its possible to
> get that by putting the diff into a file and load that into kdevelop
> though.

I think what we need is a comfortable way to "journey" through a git
history, by:
- Selecting a branch, having a list of all its history
- Allowing to change the whole working-directory to individual states
in the history of the branch (using a new temporary branch), and
allowing to inspect individual changes nicely using patch-review,
compiling, trying out, etc.
- Allowing to stop the "inspection" by simply switching back to the
original branch

Git brings everything that is required, but to make it comfortable, we
would need some notion of a "Review-Branch" which we are reviewing,
while actually being on a temporary branch.

I also often had a wish for such a feature, because it's much easier
to review changes in the _real_ context rather than just seeing a diff
in gitk.

Greetings, David