Remind the user to add files

[Display Name]

Feature request for Bazaar: when committing, ask the user if he wants to add the unknown files that appeared since last commit. These new files may indicate that the user forgot to add them, so it would be nice to confirm that. Example:

$ bzr status
unknown:
  deploy.bat

$echo "test" > new_file

$bzr commit
The following new files were not added to version control since your last commit:
  new_file
Do you want to add them now before committing? [Y/n]

[Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer)]

Bazaar generally avoids being interactive. I think you would generally want to be able to either add files, add them to the ignore list or ignore them altogether for the commit.

Perhaps this would be a nice feature for the bzr-interactive plugin?

[Ian Clatworthy (ian-clatworthy)]

I suspect the majority of command-line users don't want this hand holding by default. If you want, you can alias commit to commit --strict.

OTOH, our GUI (Explorer) does this by showing the Unversioned files very clearly. If there are any, it suggests adding, deleting or ignoring them. Only when that's done, does it suggest committing files as the sensible next step.

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

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Renato Silva wrote:
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - Remember the user to add files
> + Remind the user to add files
>

We also have "bzr commit --strict" which is what I use:

 bzr alias "commit=commit --strict"

which aborts the commit if there are unknown files (not ignored, not
added). You can always work around it with "bzr commit --no-strict". So
it checks for you, but gives the option to commit anyway.

John
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[Vincent Ladeuil (vila)]

It's not suitable to be interactive if there are tenths of files to add, not to mention hundreds or thousands.

If you use '--strict', you don't need it to be interactive and you'll get an error if you try to commit in a "dirty" tree.
The option is here because it's really a personal preference (or a project preference) to allow
"dirty" trees or not.

You seem to be a candidate for using it, let us know if aliasing the command (as John
proposed) suits your needs or if you would have preferred a configuration option set either at
the global level (bazaar.conf), intermediate level (locations.conf) or branch level (branch.conf).

[Patrick Regan (patrick-regan)]

What about creating a document, or tutorial that shows how the use of 'alias commit="commit --strict"' would help them in this situation? I'm not sure where it would fit in (I don't want to clutter the documentation), but maybe a new document that has tips and tricks for new users?

Thoughts?

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

I think if someone has specifically asked for interaction or confirmation this would be ok.

However having new-user-oriented features that need to be explicitly turned on may not help.

Perhaps the "nothing to commit" message should suggest add.