Ammending commits and other Git features in the web editor(github.dev)

[unrealapex]

I feel that github.dev lacks some of the Git functionality that native VS Code has like amending commits for example, but I learned that there were technical and practical reasons for this feature not being added(discussed here). It would be nice if github.dev had close to or almost the same about of Git integration that native VS Code has. Amending commits would be useful if the web editor didn't push every time you commited(having an option to enable or disable automatic pushing, if disabled, user needs to push manually).

[bamurtaugh]

Thanks for opening, @unrealapex! I'd love to know if there are specific motivations / common scenarios for when you amend commits in github.dev? Wondering if there might be a common thread that it is not apparent that commits get published to the remote automatically in github.dev, and folks are looking to amend their commits because of this.

[bamurtaugh]

Thank you for these insights! cc @joyceerhl too

[joyceerhl]

FWIW, we do already have a reminder in the source control box which indicates that commits go straight to the remote:

Perhaps the message needs to be more explicit?

[unrealapex]

Forgot about that, thanks for pointing it out! I think that would be a good idea.

[ArwynFr]

Besides fixing typos and missing files, my main usage of commit --amend is when working with workflow.
This is usually a try and fail process which can produce a lot of commits if not amended.

[JohnyWS]

Another usecase is working in forks, where you want your commits to be cleaner. So while they are pushed, they are currently your own, until you open PR to the original repo (unless you use non-private repo yourself, and somebody else wants to work from your fork - not my problem though ;) ).

[fulldecent]

Manual push doesn't make sense for me.

A git repository lives somewhere. Where would unpushed commits live?

If each commit needs to settle on the GitHub hosted repository, then this is a clean break—you are playing in your web browser, if you close it everything is gone, if you commit something that saves to the obvious place.

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Amending is another story, amending is just a soft reset and a commit. This workflow also includes squashing. And this also fits cleanly with what github.dev already does. If it doesn't do that, I expect it will at some point without any controversy.

[joyceerhl]

you are playing in your web browser, if you close it everything is gone

FYI, your uncommitted changes in github.dev are stored in local browser storage, so they are still there when you close and later revisit a repo in github.dev.

amending is just a soft reset and a commit

In a traditional git workflow, the amended commit would still need to be force-pushed to the remote, so in a github.dev context we would be supporting Commit Staged & Force Push (Staged) rather than Commit Staged (Amend).