DEV Community: GitLive

GitLive adds support for more branching strategies including GitFlow

Agnieszka — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 08:15:46 +0000

You can now specify which branches are not feature branches and deserve special treatment in GitLive, adding support for branching strategies with multiple special branches such as GitFlow with its master, develop and release branches.

After installing GitLive for VS Code or JetBrains, the GitLive sidebar will appear in your IDE, listing all the authors and their branches ahead of your current branch.

Special branches, like the default branch, will show at the top of the tree, instead of under the author of the last commit to the branch.

You can specify multiple special branches using a regular expression in GitLive’s settings:

The default expression is as follows and should cater to the vast majority of branching strategies out there but feel free to customize the expression for your own setup.

For example, you could remove the |release[-/].* if you still wanted release branches to appear under the author, or if your team always creates feature branches prefixed feature/ you could simplify the expression to the following:

(?!feature\/).*

Finally, it’s worth remembering that the repository view only shows branches that are active (ahead of your current branch) no matter what expression you have specified for special branches.

^{💡 Note for regex ninjas: Your expression is implicitly surrounded by ^ and $ so it needs to match the complete branch name.}

That's it for now, thanks for reading and let us know what you think in the comments!

Share your work in progress in real time from VS Code or JetBrains

Agnieszka — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 11:20:28 +0000

Need to ask a teammate for some help with your code, but don’t want to push broken changes to GitHub? GitLive has a solution 💡

TLDR;

Share your work in progress in real time from VS Code or JetBrains - YouTube

Need to ask a teammate for some help with your code, but don’t want to push broken changes to GitHub? GitLive has a solution! #shorts #developer #programming...

youtube.com

1️⃣ Install the extension for VS Code or a JetBrains IDE.

2️⃣ Then click on the sharing button and the Live icon will appear next to your name.

3️⃣ Now your local changes will be visible for your teammates.

4️⃣ And they can click on the files to see the changes.

That's it for now, thanks for reading and let us know what you think in the comments!

Pull sooner and merge faster in VS Code

Agnieszka — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 11:35:27 +0000

🔑 The key to faster merging is to pull sooner! Here is how you can make sure you’re always up to date with your remote and reduce the chances of conflicts.

TLDR;

1️⃣ If you haven’t already, go to the VS Code marketplace and install GitLive extension.

2️⃣ Once you click on the GitLive icon in the activity bar, you'll get the overview of all branches ahead, in terms of commits, of your current branch, and changes on those branches, grouped by the author.

3️⃣ Your tracking and base branches will show at the top of the tree. If you're behind you’ll see how many commits there are to pull and you can open up the branch to review the changes.

That's it for now, thanks for reading and let us know what you think in the comments!

Instant merge conflict detection in VS Code

Agnieszka — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 14:50:42 +0000

Would you like to know if your branch has conflicts before you go to merge it in? 💥
If so, check out our newest video or continue reading 👀

TLDR;

1️⃣ To get started, make sure you have the GitLive extension installed.

2️⃣ Now when you open a file from your repository you’ll see the changes from all other branches in the gutter of your editor.

3️⃣ You can roll over the affected lines to see the details of the change, the author and the branch the change is coming from, or even cherry-pick the changes into your version of the file.

4️⃣ And if you make a conflicting change in the same place you’ll get this bright red indicator instantly showing you the conflict!

Get notified when there are commits to pull in IntelliJ

Andrew — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 06:17:35 +0000

With the help of GitLive’s new pull reminders, you can now pull sooner, reduce the chances of conflicts, and merge faster!

Get notified the moment your remote has been updated and there are commits to pull from your tracking branch.

We'll even notify you on falling behind your base branch (the branch you plan to merge your changes back into once you're done), we figure out your base branch by checking the git reflog to see which branch you originally branched off when you created your current branch.

It's not always possible to tell where you branched from in the local reflog, in these cases we'll assume it was your default branch if possible, otherwise, we'll just ask you to pick one. In any case, you can easily change the base branch by clicking Change base on the notification.

You can also select No base branch to suppress notifications for your root branch (typically your main/trunk branch). Once the relationship between your branches is correctly set, you'll be notified when you are behind any branch in the chain of bases up to your root branch.

^{💡 Example: If you follow a GitFlow style branching strategy with main and develop branches, and your current feature branch was branched off develop, you'll not only be notified if your branch is behind develop but also if develop is behind main.}

Finally, you can click Show changes on the notification to open the repository view where you can inspect the changes in the branches you are behind.

The repository view also shows all the remote feature branches ahead, in terms of commits, of your current branch, check out this article to learn more:

See How Others' Changes Compare To Your Own In IntelliJ

Agnieszka Stec for GitLive ・ Nov 17 '22 ・ 3 min read

#programming #tutorial #productivity #devops

Don't have the GitLive extension installed yet? You can find it here, and if you want to learn more about the latest release, check out this blog post.

Get notified when there are commits to pull in VS Code

Michael — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:39:59 +0000

With the help of GitLive’s new pull reminders, you can now pull sooner, reduce the chances of conflicts, and merge faster!

Get notified the moment your remote has been updated and there are commits to pull from your tracking branch.

Finally, you can click Show changes on the notification to open the repository view where you can inspect the changes in the branches you are behind.

The repository view also shows all the remote feature branches ahead, in terms of commits, of your current branch, check out this article to learn more:

See how others' changes compare to your own in VS Code

Agnieszka Stec for GitLive ・ Nov 1 '22

#vscode #devops #productivity #programming

Don't have the GitLive extension installed yet? You can find it here, and if you want to learn more about the latest release, check out this blog post.

See How Others' Changes Compare To Your Own In IntelliJ

Agnieszka — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 16:14:25 +0000

Get the ultimate perspective on all the work in progress in your repository and how it compares or possibly conflicts with the changes you are making on your own branch with GitLive’s new Repository View 🚀

The repository view shows all branches ahead, in terms of commits, of your current branch and the changes on those branches, grouped by author.

GitLive performs what is known as a three dot diff between your local HEAD (on the left), and the heads of all the remote branches in your repository (on the right), to populate the tree in the repository view.

This shows you all the changes between the common ancestor of your current branch and each remote branch, similar to what you would see in a PR on GitHub.

Know when your branch falls behind

When the default branch or your remote tracking branch is ahead of your current branch they show at the top level of the tree.

As you can see, these let you know how many changed files you need to pull, and as you probably already know, it’s good Git hygiene to pull these changes sooner rather than later!

Sharing working tree changes

With GitLive you can see the unpushed changes from local clones of your repository when you have signed in and you and your fellow contributors have chosen to share working tree changes.

As mentioned above, GitLive performs what is known as a three dot diff between your local HEAD (on the left), and the heads of all the remote branches in your repository (on the right).

You can customize this diffing process by changing what is used as the left and right sides in the diff via the view options in the tool window toolbar in IntelliJ.

The options available for left and right in the tree are the following:

Left	Right
Common ancestor. Selecting this for the left will include all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch. Their remote branch. Selecting this for the left will exclude all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.	Their remote branch. Selecting this for the right will exclude any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch. Their working tree. Selecting this for the right will include any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Left

Right

Common ancestor. Selecting this for the left will include all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Their remote branch. Selecting this for the left will exclude all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Their remote branch. Selecting this for the right will exclude any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Their working tree. Selecting this for the right will include any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

An asterisk appears on the icon of any branch or file with working tree changes and it’s possible to see the same branch multiple times in the tree if multiple clones exist.

Switching between repositories in your workspace

Use the team selector to switch to a different repository view if your project or workspaces comprises more than a single repository.

The popup lists all the organizations and repositories found via the remotes of the local clones in your project or workspace.

Finally, you can also select the owner of the repository to show the organization view. It lists all the branches ahead of the default branch, grouped by author, for every repository in your organization.

It's great to review all work in progress across your whole organization but depending on the size that can be a lot of information!

Don't have the GitLive extension installed yet? You can find it here, and if want to learn more about the latest release, check out this blog post.

See how others' changes compare to your own in VS Code

Agnieszka — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 09:26:41 +0000

The repository view shows all branches ahead, in terms of commits, of your current branch and the changes on those branches, grouped by author.

This shows you all the changes between the common ancestor of your current branch and each remote branch, similar to what you would see in a PR on GitHub.

Know when your branch falls behind

When the default branch or your remote tracking branch is ahead of your current branch they show at the top level of the tree.

As you can see, these let you know how many changed files you need to pull, and as you probably already know, it’s good Git hygiene to pull these changes sooner rather than later!

Sharing working tree changes

With GitLive you can see the unpushed changes from local clones of your repository when you have signed in and you and your fellow contributors have chosen to share working tree changes.

As mentioned above, GitLive performs what is known as a three dot diff between your local HEAD (on the left), and the heads of all the remote branches in your repository (on the right).

You can customize this diffing process by changing what is used as the left and right sides in the diff via the view options in the sidebar title in VS Code.

The options available for left and right in the tree are the following:

Left	Right
Common ancestor. Selecting this for the left will include all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch. Their remote branch. Selecting this for the left will exclude all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.	Their remote branch. Selecting this for the right will exclude any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch. Their working tree. Selecting this for the right will include any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Left

Right

Common ancestor. Selecting this for the left will include all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Their remote branch. Selecting this for the left will exclude all changes pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Their remote branch. Selecting this for the right will exclude any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

Their working tree. Selecting this for the right will include any local changes not yet pushed to the remote in the diff of the branch.

An asterisk appears on the icon of any branch or file with working tree changes and it’s possible to see the same branch multiple times in the tree if multiple clones exist.

Switching between repositories in your workspace

Use the team selector to switch to a different repository view if your project or workspaces comprises more than a single repository.

The popup lists all the organizations and repositories found via the remotes of the local clones in your project or workspace.

It's great to review all work in progress across your whole organization but depending on the size that can be a lot of information!

Don't have the GitLive extension installed yet? You can find it here, and if want to learn more about the latest release, check out this blog post.

Early Merge Conflict Detection Across All Branches In IntelliJ

Michael — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 14:44:10 +0000

We are happy to announce that GitLive's flagship feature, early merge conflict detection, now works across all branches in IntelliJ! 🎉

When we first introduced real-time merge conflict detection, only the changes from each of your teammates’ current branch were shown in the gutter. This meant you could miss a merge conflict from changes in a branch that is not currently being worked on, for instance, changes from a PR waiting for review. Now the change indicators in the gutter of the editor show changes from all branches that contain changes compared to your current branch.

And, as before, and as long as you are not in offline mode, this includes the unpushed changes of your teammates that are also not in offline mode for real-time, instant merge conflict detection!

New gutter indicator filters

Previously you had a simple switch to show or hide the indicators you see in the gutter of the editor. Now, similar to the team window, you can filter the change indicators shown in the gutter of your editor by type.

It’s worth noting that these filters are independent of the team window filters, but when you change the team window filters the gutter indicator filters are automatically updated to match (but not vice versa). To open the gutter filters menu, right-click on the gutter and search for GitLive in the collapsible menu.

🔸 Pushed Changes. Turning off pushed changes will hide the indicators coming from the pushed changes on other branches.
🔸 Unpushed Changes. Turning off unpushed changes will hide the indicators coming from the unpushed changes of your teammates.
🔸 Non-conflicting changes. On by default, turn off non-conflicting changes to only show conflicts in the gutter.
🔸 Include stale changes. By default, changes from branches that have not been modified in 3 months are hidden, turn this on to show them.

👉 ^{Both pushed and unpushed changes are on by default, turn both off to hide the indicators completely}

That’s it for now, we would love to know what you think of these updates and how we can make GitLive better for you, so please reach out via the comments section below.

Don't have the GitLive extension installed yet? You can find it here, and if want to learn more about the latest release, check out this blog post.

Early Merge Conflict Detection Across All Branches in VS Code

Agnieszka — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 08:51:50 +0000

We are happy to announce that GitLive's flagship feature, early merge conflict detection, now works across all branches in VS Code! 🎉

And, as before, and as long as you are not in offline mode, this includes the unpushed changes of your teammates that are also not in offline mode for real-time, instant merge conflict detection!

New gutter indicator filters

It’s worth noting that these filters are independent of the team window filters, but when you change the team window filters the gutter indicator filters are automatically updated to match (but not vice versa). To open the gutter filters menu, click on the GitLive icon in the upper right corner of VS Code.

👉 ^{Both pushed and unpushed changes are on by default, turn both off to hide the indicators completely}

That’s it for now, we would love to know what you think of these updates and how we can make GitLive better for you, so please reach out via the comments section below.

Don't have the GitLive extension installed yet? You can find it here, and if want to learn more about the latest release, check out this blog post.

GitLive's Tool Window Just Got a Major Upgrade in PhpStorm

Fred — Tue, 31 May 2022 08:53:54 +0000

With the new tool window, you can now see all work in progress across your entire team in a single view, it's like a branch-based version of github.com/pulls but updated in real-time directly inside PhpStorm 🤯

The tool window shows every branch ahead of the default branch for every repository in your organization, grouped by the author (the last commit to a branch determines the author).

You can expand a branch to see a list of the changed files and click on a file to open a diff compared to the default branch of the repository.

All this works completely offline but if you sign in, you'll unleash the full power of the tool window!

Sign in with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Azure DevOps (support for other services will be added soon) and you'll switch from offline to real-time mode.

Compare the screenshot above to the offline mode screenshot and you'll notice the following additions to the UI:

The online indicators on avatars, branches and files will show you which of your teammates are online, their current branch and the file they currently have open in their editor.
The modified indicator (*) will show you which branches and files contain changes that have not yet been committed or pushed to the remote. These changes are also visible in the diff opened by clicking on the file.
See the related issue for a branch along with the option to open the issue directly within your issue tracker once you've connected one.

Enhanced team filters

With the tool window now showing you every branch ahead of the default branch from all the repositories in your organization it can easily start to be a case of information overload.

So we’ve added 4 new filters in the tool window, in addition to the existing pushed/unpushed changes filters, to help you find the teammates, branches and changes you are interested in.

To open the team filters, click on the eye icon in the menu bar.

🔸 Pushed Changes. Turning off pushed changes will hide teammates, branches and files without any local, unpushed changes.
🔸 Unpushed Changes Turning off unpushed changes will hide teammates, branches and files without changes that have been pushed to the remote repository (marked with an asterisk).

^{👉 Both pushed and unpushed changes are on by default and you can turn off either but not both, unpushed changes are only available if you're signed in.}

🔸 Todo. This option will show the issues assigned to a teammate that are not yet associated with a branch.
🔸 In progress. This option shows issues associated with a branch and branches without an associated issue.

^{👉 In progress is on by default whilst todo is off and requires you to connect your issue tracker, you cannot turn both off.}

🔸 Stale. By default the teammates, branches and issues that have not been modified in 3 months are hidden, turn this on to show them.
🔸 Offline. Turning offline off will hide teammates who are currently offline and the branches of online teammates that they are not currently working on.

^{👉 Stale is off by default whilst offline is on, you can have either on or off. Note that turning on stale can result in a lot of results!}

That’s it for now, we would love to know what you think of these updates and how we can make GitLive better for you, so please reach out via the comments section below.

Don't have the GitLive plugin installed yet? You can find it here, and if want to learn more about the latest release check out this blog post.

GitLive Now Works With Any Git Repository in WebStorm!

Andrew — Tue, 17 May 2022 11:52:07 +0000

We are happy to announce GitLive now works, out-of-the-box in offline mode, with any Git repository in WebStorm!

Previously we only supported repositories from the big four hosting services (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps) and required you to authorize access to the service before you could start using GitLive.

Now when you install GitLive it will start in offline mode. The offline mode uses the data from your local Git repository only and nothing is sent outside your network. Your repository should have a remote but it can be hosted anywhere.

In the GitLive tool window you'll see all the authors of branches currently ahead of your default branch, the last commit to a branch determines who it will appear under.

Drill down into an individual author’s branches to see the files changed and inspect diffs plus view the associated issue or pull request.

The changes from the branches shown in the GitLive tool window also appear for your current file in the gutter of your editor. The gutter indicators show the differences in the file from other branches compared to your local version. It even shows you when the changes conflict with your own - a kind of early warning system for merge conflicts!

Click on the author's avatar to inspect a change and see the diff, what branch they're from and even cherry-pick changes straight into your local file.

And you can still sign in to go real-time and see your teammate's unpushed changes in the team window, get notified in the gutter the moment you make a conflicting change, plus make calls and codeshare to edit together simultaneously.

Signing in still requires a repository from the big four hosting services for now but we'll be adding support for other services, including self-hosted, soon!

Don't have the GitLive plugin installed yet? You can find it here, and if want to learn more about the latest release, check out this blog post.