Feature request - Change lists

[Greg]

Brief:
Add 'change lists' UI which is nothing more than the grouping of modified files for the purpose of performing Commit or Revert on those groups.

Description:
In normal work flow, a user may modify a number of files which logically fit into a few categories. It is convenient to logically group those files. Consider the following example.

Example:

+Default
-file1
-file2
-file3

+Bug #412 Fix pot hole in yellow brick road
-file4

+Bug #417 Add Tin man auto oil
-file5
-file6

+DON'T COMMIT!
-file7

A user here has a bunch of files they were working on, and have yet to assign them to a specific changelist, hence the generic change list title. They have also worked on 2 bugs. They will want to commit the files related to those 2 bugs separately for easy maintenance and historic record. The user also has a configuration file modified which they will never commit, instead they will revert at some future date. When the user goes to commit a changelist, the changelist name will become the commit description, which they may optionally modify before the commit is accepted.

You can see this is a client UI file management assistant. I am basing this implementation on my past use of the Perforce client.

I just noticed there is a new plugin with the ability to 'shelf, unshelf' I have no idea if this is similar to the change list concept or not. Which ever way, the end result is a client UI experience where modified files are simply and easily grouped. The groups themselves should be created or disbanded by the user at will.

[Greg (gregspecialsource)]

I was mistaken about possible duplication with shelving. Although shelving has a similar use to change lists, it is not the same thing.

A shelving scenario might be 'temporarily put away my current code changes so I can fix and commit some bug here and now'. I have already described a change list scenario.

So a change list could be used to implement a shelving scenario, if files did not conflict, but not the other way around.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

This is a bit like the 'marks' concept for bzr.

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

[Ian Clatworthy (ian-clatworthy)]

Filtered views provide functionality like this in the command line client. That feature isn't supported by the GUI level currently.