GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 702639
Do something else with the sidebar
Last modified: 2018-05-22 13:07:45 UTC
The current sidebar doesn't make good use of the screen space. You don't use branches or tags all that often, and you don't need them displayed while you are viewing a particular branch/tag. The sidebar eats space that could be used to show the commit history. This would be the ideal place to use a popover - you could have a visible control in the toolbar for the branch/tag, which could be opened when you want to switch. I say popover rather than combobox, because you really need a way to easily scroll and/or search - there will sometimes be a lot of branches and tags. In the absence of a popover widget for GTK+, it might make sense to simply have the sidebar pop out on demand: by default it would be hidden and you would press a button and to display it. Then if you switch branch/tag it would hide again.
(In reply to comment #0) > The current sidebar doesn't make good use of the screen space. You don't use > branches or tags all that often, and you don't need them displayed while you > are viewing a particular branch/tag. I beg to disagree there :-) I keep a lot of local branches and switch betweek them all the time, e.g. to compare things, try different solutions, check regressions etc. The old gitg had a combobox and that was one of the parts I really didn't like and was cumbersome to use
IMO, the sidebar would be fully utilized if one could switch branches by clicking on the branch names. Currently, we can view commits of various branches by clicking on the branch names. This dual behaviour could perhaps be given as setting in the 'Preferences' dialog tabs? +1 on the option to hide the sidebar with a button though I think it should be open by default. Marking bug as NEW and enhancement.
(In reply to comment #1) ... > I beg to disagree there :-) > > I keep a lot of local branches and switch betweek them all the time, e.g. to > compare things, try different solutions, check regressions etc. ... Right, there might be some situations when you want to explore a repository and will be switching between branches fairly frequently. However, I think we can also say that in the majority of cases, people will be focused on a particular branch for periods of time. Maybe it would be possible to have the autohide behaviour that I described with the option to pin the sidebar so it is always open, or to have a configuration option to make it always visible.
(In reply to comment #3).. > Right, there might be some situations when you want to explore a repository and > will be switching between branches fairly frequently. However, I think we can > also say that in the majority of cases, people will be focused on a particular > branch for periods of time. > I am not sure that's the "majority of cases": I definitely advocate to have one (local) branch per feature, so switching and comparing branches is a frequent operation and most importantly it is one of the operation where I would really enjoy using a GUI. That said, I agree with having the sidebar collapsible. gnome-maps has a similar pattern. I think I would prefer just an explicit toggle to show/hide (persisted in a setting) instead of autohide and pin.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 702600 ***
Not the same kind of collapsing, my bad.
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