Re: 1.5 beta: Change list feature

Hautzenroeder, Brenna M wrote:
> 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).

You can also use the 'check for modifications' dialog. There you can
also activate 'show unmodified' to get a list of all files.

The main reason why it's not added to the explorer context menu: to get
a list of all changelists (so you can 'add' files to an existing
changelist) requires crawling the whole working copy - way too much to
do just to show a context menu. The menu could even time out (i.e., the
explorer would abandon showing the menu if it takes too long).

> 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.

As mentioned above: use the 'check for modifications' dialog instead of
the commit dialog, and show the unmodified files too. Then you can add
your files to the changelist *before* you start editing them.

> 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.

That depends: if you show the commit dialog (or the cfm dialog) from the
working copy root, it will find all the changelists you created. But if
you however only start the dialog for that one file, then the dialog
doesn't know anything about other changelists because it doesn't crawl
the working copy for them, just the file you selected.

> 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.

I'll check that.

Stefan

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