Make pull requests easier | Hacker News Reader

Make pull requests easier

indifferenceapp.com

15 pointsmlakewood17 comments

A bit too lean of an 'mvp' for me.

The pull-request box looks like a live-demo, so I dug up a URL only to find out it's not :/

A bit of a nit-pick, but if there's only 1 field, I don't need to be told it's required - the '* required' on the singular email field seems redundant. (I understand it's probably the framework you're using, but it just seems weird.)

You only screen shot doesn't show: does your side-by-side diffs support coloring? eg. https://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/298976...

It isn't an application, it is only a web page for an idea he had. The definition of vaporware.

I manage a number of student projects at the University of Illinois. I can integrate Indifference into our current code review process if you need an early test group. We currently use Github pull requests. My email for the signup list is similar to my HN handle, jtfairbank.

Feature requests:

* A signoff list of people who've reviewed the pull request and feel its ready to accept. This'd be helpful as most of our work is independent / 'remote' (we're not all in the same room together).

* Works on most platforms, or is web based. Each student has their own personal setup that we need to accomodate.

* The ability for a Pull Request submitter to link to other resources, such as documentation, Trello cards, various Github features (code files and issues come to mind)... Basically, it'd be nice for the submitter to provide a short description of how their changes affect the software at a high level. I find most of this exists in our other documentation. Currently we just add a description with the links to the PR description on Github, but maybe you can improve on that.

Hi! that sounds awesome! Email sent your way!

Thank you for forcing email validation in your sign up page. I get a lot of spam because so few do.

What "desktop" is your target? Someone recently asked me if I knew a good side-by-side diff tool that worked with GitHub and wasn't written a decade ago. I only knew of a buggy plugin. This, superficially, seems to be what he was looking for. If your target is Apple, he'd likely be thrilled. If it's Linux, I'd be interested.

As a mac and linux user those would be my first targets. Im planning on writing it using clojure and embedding webkit in it (as im a web guy first) ala light-table. So moving from one platform to another should be trivial.

Looks good, the landing page could be a bit clearer - some more screenshots would be good. At the moment all the images just look like GitHub screenshots.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll work on some better screenshots.

Is there anything from the content that you dont understand, that I could make clearer?

Is this something that you would use?

You seem to have plenty of screenshots, but I don't find them to be particularly informative. After reading through the page and glancing at all of the images, here's what I take away: it's a tool that allows you to enter a pull request URL and display a side-by-side diff.

The side-by-side diff feature is buried at the bottom, and the whole page seems to imply that there are other features within somewhere, but I can't figure out what they would be (I would love to see screenshots of them!).

Thanks! I think what you're saying is the details about the side-by-side view should be further up the page and the idea's around context should be more fleshed out?

I'll also work on some better screen shots!

Thanks once again for taking the time!

What I've gotten from this is that you're shipping side-by-side diffs that are 'better', but it's unclear what it's better /than/. Inline diffs? Some other tool's side-by-side diffing?

I want to know more about "better navigation" and context.

I would love, love, love to talk with you about this. justin@abrah.ms Seriously.

Email sent! Thanks!

For the other readers.

First up. I find inline diff's really hard to comprehend once they get past a few lines changed here and there. This might be just me, but anecdotally I've found other devs to also feel this.

The better context and navigation is all about seeing the change in the context of the code-base. Small code changes can have large effects. Indifference will allow you to navigate the whole code base rather than just the single change set +/- a few lines. In this way you can get a better handle on what has changed and how it will effect the rest of the codebase.

Gitcritic does some of this right now as a webapp, including side-by-side diffs:

http://gitcritic.com

https://github.com/danvk/better-pull-requests

Oh awesome! thanks for the links!

Reviewing pull requests in github with the inline diff is a pain. You also don't get enough context to do a correct review. This app is a way to fix that.

At this point I want to validate the idea. If you're interested in this please leave your email address. or a comment below. Any feedback would be great!

Is this meant for projects that aren't using Github?

I think at some point it could be. At the moment im trying to make it work for Github pull requests as thats the need I can see.

In the future working for something like bitbucket or arbitrary git repos I think would be a feature that could be added.

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