Sometimes I want to provide a link to some source code in the comment to an issue.
If I open repository in browser and find the fileI need, the link refers to master branch by default. It means that over time the code referred by the link will change, because the master will move together with commits history.
In GitHub and GitLab when you want to get a permanent link on a file you just opened, it is enough to press y on the keyboard and the link will switch from referring the master branch to particular commit hash it points to.
I.e. https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/blob/master/README -> https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/blob/7fd1a60b01f91b314f59955a4e4d4e80d8edf11d/README
At work I use BitBucket server (v7.10.1, if it matters) and unfortunately the y does not work, and I also do not see any button on UI to get permanent link. How can I achieve the same result (get permanent link) on BitBucket server?
I know a couple of tricks I am not satisfied with:
using Bitbucket Linky plugin for Intellij, but I want a more light-weight way
pressing History button on a file, and choosing the most recent one (but it does not give you the master hash, it gives the hash of the last change of the file. And also this button won't work if the file has a single version and never changed after the 1st commit)
Got to the version you want, and then click 'Raw file' (top right hand side of screen)
The path in the address bar should now be a permanent link. It will be the raw version of the file unfortunately, but it is a permanent link.
Related
I create a tutorial, where I want to introduce some testing frameworks like Mockito, WireMock and EasyMock. I want to explain it step by step. Additionaly I want to provide examples, where the reader of the tutorial can try to recreate these. Therefore I want to to give them the opportunity to look into my source code and use it when they are not able to recreate the test. And then they can use the actual version to continue and then again, when they are not able to create the next test, I want to to give them the possibility to use my new version with the new test.
My idea is to use different commits and link them to the tutorial. How can I do this or is there any better approach to reach what I just explained?
Easy Peasy!
The basic approach is this: browse to exactly what you want on GitHub, and then share the URL. GitHub URLs are stable permalinks, even when you navigate to an old revision or another branch.
Open the repo in Github.
Browse to Branch, tag or commit you want.
For branch/tag, there's a drop down in the upper left of the files listing.
For a specific commit:
Click on Commits at the top of the files listing. This will take you to a page showing all the diffs. (You can share this URL if you want. Otherwise continue to the next step.)
Clink on Browse files in the upper right corner.
You are now looking at a repository view just like the one where you started, except this view is of a specific branch, tag or commit. It's like a GitHub time machine.
If you want to link to the entire repo at this branch/tag/commit, copy the URL right now.
If you want to link to a particular file at this branch/tag/commit, navigate to the file in the listing, then copy that URL.
If you want to link to a particular line in the file, click on a line number, then click on the ... button that appears next to it and then click Copy permalink
If you want to link to a range of lines in the file, hold down the shift key and clink on the other end of the range of lines. The lines will be highlighted. Click on the ... button that appears next to it and then click Copy permalink
All that said, unless you are walking them through your many iterations of the code, I'm not sure giving them links to versions in git history is the way to go. Let's say they want to clone your repo. Then they'd have to git checkout example-2-version-3 or something.
The more typical approach is to put the different versions in a directory hierarchy, making it far easier to browse, whether on GitHub or a local clone of your repo.
I want to link to a line of code in such a way that the link will continue to work even when the file is updated in future commits.
In Github I would do this by pressing 'y' to move to a version of the page that includes the blob SHA:
https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/b49e38b76b0998b0a8312d8c08c98728d3de2006/activerecord/lib/arel/attributes/attribute.rb#L30
(Alternatively GitHub has a 'copy permalink' option in the '...' menu that appears in the margin when you select a line - documented here.)
Is there an equivalent in Azure DevOps?
The link that I get when I select a line has the form:
https://.../_git/project?path=XXXX&version=GBmaster&line=426&lineStyle=plain&lineEnd=427&lineStartColumn=1&lineEndColumn=1
Lots of parameters defining the selection but nothing pinning the file version.
Edit:
The below illustrations can be summarized in a few keyboard shortcuts.
Open the repo Files view using the 'e' global shortcut
Use 't' to put focus on the path selection to quickly navigate to the file in question
point 2 and 3 are order agnostic in relation to one another
Use 'y' to change the Files view to be based on the latest commit instead of on the branch
Make selection
Copy link as shown in illustration below
Browse files on the commit
Make sure you're browsing the entire source for the commit. Selecting lines when viewing the commit itself (ie AzDOs fancy git show) is for adding comments to the commit, but it doesn't help produce a link to the line # that version, nor is there a way (at least not that I could find) to get a link to the comment made on the line. Getting a link to a comment on a line in a commit might have been helpful to provide additional direct context to what is linked and why, but that's also not what you asked for.
don't click on the commit itself
make sure you're browsing all files as of a commit (not a branch)
Make selection
You should be able to select a line in the file contents and get a link to that line(s) in that version.
note: the link produced here is even more lengthy than the one you provided in your question.
Joy
When you navigate to the copied link, you will be directed to the commit and file contents with the line highlighted.
Understand, this link is bound to the commit you used to create it not to the tip of the branch. I expect this was how links are surfaced to be more sure that the link wouldn't break or lose context as the commit at the tip of the branch changes over time.
Thank you #JoshGust. For anyone else who wants the abbreviated version:
Files -->
(your repo branch) -->
History -->
Click A Commit hash/number (Latest/Head usually) -->
Browse Files -->
Your file -->
Select text & get a link.
Sheesh... quite some hoops to jump through, but glad it's possible.
To create a web (repository) link to a specific line from within your IDE, there are extensions with options to link to files, selections, to a branch or to a specific commit.
I am using these ones:
Editor
Plugin
Visual Studio Code
Git Web Links for VS Code
Visual Studio 2022
Git Web Links
Is there a way to either scroll faster through the commit history OR go to the very beginning?
I don’t see an option, not even on desktop site.
I’m trying to figure out why a certain branch was made but that info is not in the README section because the README is not customized per branch.
I don't think github has this built in but there are a couple of ways using URLs.
With some trial and error using page? gets you to the beginning of the history fast: https://github.com/micropython/micropython/commits/master?page=242
This is less trial and error because you can enter nearly exact values: you know the current latest commit's hash and github says there's about 8450 commits so this one gets you to the first page: https://github.com/micropython/micropython/commits/master?after=cada971113e6db0cf9e0751e95dbe9217dd707b5+8420
There used to be a tool for it but the site is dead now so only the code is left.
But anyway, I'm fairly sure you'd achieve your actual goal way (examining log searching for something) faster without github, by using git itself. Github is fine for hosting but it's not exactly a complete git user interface. On th other hand git log/blame/rev-list commands are built for that. E.g. first commit hash: git rev-list --max-parents=0 HEAD
I'm new to github and currently only starting off using github for mac.
I have taken a clone of my client's website and made some development changes locally. Note: I'm literally working with the files in the directory I sync with.
I want to push only one small change as the rest is still under development. Is it possible to push only the one file?
Git pushes deal with commits, not files. You'll need to create a commit that contains your selected changes. This is one area where Git's index is really handy.
Let's say you've modified two files, foo and bar.
If you want to commit only the changes to foo, using the command line you can do
git add foo
git commit
This will create a new commit updating foo, but bar's changes will remain only in your working copy. You can now push the new commit.
It's been a while since I've used the graphical GitHub tools, and I've only used them on Windows, but I believe the way to commit only certain files is to check or uncheck the box beside each file before you commit. You can see these checkboxes in their documentation:
You can go even further. If some of the changes in bar should be part of a commit, but not all of them, you can do something like git add --patch, which will break your changes up into chunks and prompt you for the ones to add to the index (these are the ones that will be included when you commit).
On GitHub for Mac you can do this too:
Select one or more lines to commit by clicking on the line numbers in the gutter. In the latest release, you can select a block of changes at a time. Hover over the right hand side of the line numbers to get a preview of what will be selected, and click to select.
See the documentation for git-add for details.
If you want to add a reference to a specific line or a range of lines, it would be nice to get an URL that does that.
Note that the problem with the #Lxx-Lyy is that (from this post):
source files are subject to change, or even be removed, so there’s no guarantee that your link will always point to the correct place.
By default, GitHub project pages link to the most current version of the source. A better practice is to link to a specific commit, where the content of source files are not subject to versioning.
To view a GitHub project at a certain commit, click on the tree link in the commit header, or just press t on your keyboard. You can then browse the project files, and link to sources of this commit, i.e.
http://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/27291ff06ddb655f90a8d1eada71f7ac61499b12/src/css.js#L171-L185.
Note that the only difference in the URL is changing the branch name master with the commit SHA.
+1 tip from Paul Irish:
plus you only need 4 characters of the SHA in the URL... it figures it out.
I usually truncate to 7ish characters.
Nice: http://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/27291ff/src/css.js#L171-185
If you have a GitHub page which does not reference a sha1, type y:
that will reload that same page with the current SHA1.
If you go the the file (or version of the file you want to refer to), click the line number (or hold shift down to select a range).
=> you will see that the URL changes (it adds something like #L21-L23 to the URL).
Just copy the URL.