Git (and Folder compare with Git with WinMerge)

[Update] there's a new post with instructions for configuring git at: http://pydev.blogspot.com/2011/02/git-on-command-line.html

In case it was missed, Pydev is now on Git :)

I'm finding it the hard way that unfortunately its eclipse integration is still not ready for prime time -- it's missing some basic things such as a synchronize view, and I've had some bugs for it to mark the changed files in the package explorer (so, I'm waiting until it matures a bit to give it another try).

In the meanwhile, I'm using the command line (with the msysgit bash).

The thing I missed most was the synchronize view. A part of my modus operandi is making a review of all the changes before doing a commit -- and editing some things there, so, based on this link, I've created a script -- which I called gitdd -- that will create a directory structure with the HEAD and links to the changed files so that one can change those files in a diff viewer (in this case, WinMerge).

The script is below if anyone wants to use it (note that it must be run in the msysgit bash -- although it should probably work on Linux too, with another diff viewer)


#!/bin/sh -e

# usage: gitdd <path>
# Compares the current differences in winmerge with links to original files.
# Note that it must be executed at the root of the git repository.

SUBDIRECTORY_OK=1

O=".git-winmerge-tmp-$$"
V=HEAD
list="$O/list"
list_exist="$O/list_exist"
trap "rm -rf $O" 0
mkdir $O
mkdir $O/b

git diff $V --name-only -z $1 > $list

/d/bin/Python261/python.exe /c/Program\ Files/Git/bin/gitddpy.py $list $O/b/

cat $list | xargs -0 git archive --prefix=a/ $V | /d/bin/bin-1.0/tar.exe xf - -C $O

/d/bin/WinMerge/WinMergeU.exe //r //u //wr //dl WorkingCopy $O/b $O/a


[Update]
I wanted to create links to the files (so that I could edit them on WinMerge and have the original changed), so, I ended up creating a gitddpy.py to create the link (not sure why git prompt was crashing when using the shell for that -- so, this was the solution that worked for me).

The gitddpy.py contents are:


import sys
print sys.argv

f = file(sys.argv[1])
contents = f.read()
import subprocess
import os.path
for line in contents.split('\0'):
    if os.path.exists(line):
        subprocess.call(['cp', line, '--parents', '-l',
        '--target-directory='+sys.argv[2]], shell=True)
f.close()



[Update]
Configuring Git with the following:

git config format.pretty "%h %ct %ad %Cgreen%aN%Creset %s"
git config log.date short

The commands I use most (using the msysgit Bash) are:

git status
git commit -a -m "Message"
git push origin master
git checkout <path>
git log -n 6 --format="%ct %Cgreen%aN%Creset %s"
git commit --amend (change last commit message)

And some of the commands I had to discover how to use in the msysgit bash are:

Alt+Space+E+K: mark contents for copy
Insert: paste contents
Alt+Back: erase until whitespace

The last thing worth mentioning is that the Pydev releases don't have such a nice unique id as the one that was available with subversion anymore, and it now contains the commit time (%ct in the log format). It's a bit annoying that it's such a big number, but I believe that the other choices were worse (the hash would seem totally random for someone seeing it, and basing it on the number of commits wouldn't work with history rewriting).

To sum things up: yes, I know that not being able to do everything in Eclipse sucks a bit, but hopefully the Git tools for Eclipse will catch up soon -- I'm hoping that having the history offline and not having to worry about renames, as well as the whole idea of decentralized versioning systems pays for this nuisance for now (and I'm certain that when the Eclipse plugin for Git catches up it'll be much better).