1.5 beta: Change list feature

I've been playing around with the beta (and alpha) version of 1.5.0, and I must say, I like the new features a lot! However, the new change lists feature seems a bit odd to me; here's why:

1) I expected that the change list option would have been added to the normal TortoiseSVN context menu, not the commit dialog. I can sort of see the reason for this since it is tightly coupled with commits; however, the change list feature now seems limited in its flexibility (i.e. I can't add file(s) to a particular change list in the middle of a major edit without invoking the commit dialog - which seems counterintuitive).

2) I find it frustrating, though, that I have to actually edit the file before I add it to a change list. It seems that I have to retroactively assign files to a change list after being edited as opposed to starting with a set of files in a change list and then proceeding with the common set of changes. This approach also seems useless in the case where I make one major edit across several related files and then commit it - no need for a change list here as far as I can tell.

3) It also seems that I can't add files to a change list after the change list has already been created:
   1 - Assign two files to a change list, let's call it MyEdits, and either commit or cancel commit.
   2 - Try and add another file to a change list, in particular, MyEdits. All of the available change lists in Move To Changelist are <new changelist> and ignore on commit - so it seems that the creation of a change list is a one time deal.

4) After I've added a file to a change list (we'll stick with MyEdits), I click on the Subversion tab under the file's properties and see that MyEdits is shown as the Repository UUID value instead of the Changelist value (which is empty). This seems like a bug, but I also don't know what each value truly represents.

5) The documentation for this new feature (so far) is only about 2 paragraphs and doesn't really go into much use-case or implementation details. It doesn't even mention the Keep Changelists checkbox!

Whew! :) I doubt whether any of the above points could be integrated into the code before the actual 1.5.0 release or if it's even deemed desirable to do so for a later release; or maybe I'm missing the point of the change lists feature all together. However, at the very least, it seems that the documentation could be beefed up a bit to give users a better idea of how to maximize this new feature in their daily activities (and how to properly implement it).

-Brenna Hautzenroeder
Received on 2008-03-25 20:21:20 CET