Washing GitHub emails to include inline patch?

[Kyle Meyer]

William Casarin <jb55 at jb55.com> writes:

> I was wondering if you had any insight into what I'm thinking next. I
> would love to view these patches via the way magit handles hunks. I
> wonder if there was a way to get magit-style hunk browsing when viewing
> a patch file with a series of commits.
>
> Things like:
>
>   * Jump to the next/previous hunk/commit in a patch series

Diff mode has navigation commands to go to the next hunk/file, but not
the next commit.

>   * Collapse hunks/commits with tab

Hmm, yeah, I don't think Diff mode has commands for collapsing sections.
And I haven't checked, but I'd guess that Diff mode isn't really
recognizing the structure of the patch series; it's probably just
considering the next commit's header/message as context lines.

Magit doesn't have a mode for displaying a patch series.  Creating such
a mode shouldn't be too painful, at least if the command maps the patch
series to a local repository.

However, I personally haven't felt the need for such a command.  I
pretty frequently use the command I posted earlier in this thread to
take a quick look at PRs, but, for anything aside from the simplest
changes, I want to apply the commits locally to review/test.  If I
regularly review PRs for a GitHub repo, I have

        fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/pull/origin/*

in the GitHub remote's configuration section of ".git/config".  (GitLab
has an analogous merge request namespace.)  Then, after fetching from
the GitHub remote, I can view the PR in Magit like I would any other
ref.

> You get this for free with mailed patches + notmuch, but dealing with
> large patch series from GitHub is a bit annoying as it's one big buffer
> with no way to jump between commits.

I share your preference for mailed patches, but using the process above,
I don't find *viewing* GitHub PRs annoying.  I do find *reviewing*
GitHub PRs annoying and tedious compared to reviewing patches on a
mailing list.  At the moment, I typically do the review/commenting
locally and at the end open a browser and add my inline comments.

Jonas recently got a Kickstarter funded [1], and one of his goals is to
support code review from within Magit [2].  Not sure how that will turn
out, but it seems more promising than my current strategy of hoping
everyone will start sharing my preference for mail-based collaboration :)


[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-the-magical-git-client
[2] https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/2972

-- 
Kyle