Comments on Github Files

[Andy Micone]

I'm not new to H&M but I recently upgraded after a long hiatus with version 8 and some of the version control seems different to me. I like to break topics into separate files and check the files in individually so I can track changes better. Insofar, the github integration has gone smoothly for me and I haven't had any troubles checking in and out individual files. However, one thing I swear I could do before was control comments on individual files as they were checked back in. Now, it seems that all files get a generic check-in comment HMSAVE hostname@domain.

I like to control comments so that I can automatically combine them on major versions so I can instantly have a revision history of the document and insert that into the document (usually, I write a script for this purpose).

Is there a way to provide comments for files as you check them in, so when everything is committed to github it has your comments instead of generic comments? If I'm missing something please clarify.

[Tim Green]

Hi Andy,

Support for git was introduced in version 9 along with the general switch from programmatic to script-based interface for all version control support. This was necessary for SVN because of the dwindling support for the necessary runtime DLLs, which made it very difficult to keep up with the current versions of SVN and Tortoise. With the scripted interface we don't have to install any third-party program components and you can always use the latest version -- of both SVN and now also git.

At the same time, because we're using the scripted interface, there are also a couple of restrictions. One is the requirement that in git each Help+Manual project must have its own repository, because it's not possible to manage a subfolder in an existing git repository via the scripting interface without a fairly high risk of catastrophic errors. Another is what you've run into: Individual comments aren't possible. At the moment you also only have a generic auto-generated comment for the commit from Help+Manual as well. We may change that in a future version, but even then it will only be one comment for the entire commit, not custom comments for individual files.

[Andy Micone]

Okay, it seems to work well enough. We can all understand the technical limitations and the fact that aging DLLs, which everyone relies on, are no longer being maintained by a particular company, which shall remain nameless. Getting the ability to add a comment across the commit would be on my wanted features list. I understand comments on the individual files aren't possible. A comment on the entire commit would still be sufficient to build a revision history; you would need to convey more in one comment than in a series of comments, and I can live with that.

The integrated source control check-in and out is an overall improvement, no question.