Checkin operation suddenly commits ALL assets!

[Wolfram]

Hiho.

Using 8.0.16.3651, and to my horror I discovered that a Checkin via the Pending Changes window suddenly commits ALL items that have their checkbox selected - even Private ones, i.e. items that were explicitly NOT added to revision control!

In the past, these items were simply ignored, as you need to manually "Apply local changes" (or "Checkout", as it's called now).

I was pretty sure I read through all the Release Notes of all public versions (even the "hidden" ones that are no longer accessible via the Download page), and I don't remember seeing any mention of this.

This is a vital workflow change that can easily break projects if people do not know about it! 😞

So is this a bug, or is an intended, new behaviour? At the very least there should be a warning dialog, or a different Checkin option that will also affect Private files.

Note that the current behaviour also creates an inconsistency between the "Checkin" and "Undo changes" buttons: Previously, both buttons ignores "Private" items. Now Checkin treats these items as "Added" (despite them being "Private"), while the Undo still ignores them.

[psantosl]

Hey, a few releases ago we added this preference:

https://www.plasticscm.com/download/releasenotes/8.0.16.3552

 

But it should be a preference and shouldn't be set by default. Can you confirm this is the case?

[Wolfram]

Hi psantosl!

No, that was not it. I understand what this new toggle does, but in my configuration/installation it is disabled, and it seems it is also disabled by default (=when deleting my local config and re-starting Plastic, it is still off).

 

However, what changed as opposed to previous versions is the BEHAVIOUR of what happens if a Private file has its checkbox marked when committing. Previously, these files were simply NOT committed (as they were marked PRIVATE, meaning they are NOT registered as "Added" to revision control). NOW any file that has its checkbox marked WILL be committed, no matter whether its state is "Added" or "Private", and no matter whether the "Private" state was applied automatically (=the default for all newly created files), or whether the file was EXPLICITLY set to "Private" (e.g., it is a local and/or temporary file you don't want to commit yet/at all).

 

While I understand the reason for changing this behaviour may have been to prevent mistakes of people forgetting to add files to revision control before committing, with the new behaviour it can instead happen that you commit files you did NOT want to commit, and IMHO this mistake is MUCH more dangerous, as it can now happen that you inadvertently commit security-critical files, or local project files that must not be visible on the server, or Gigabytes of data files you did not want on the server, and so on.

With that new "Private files are always Added" paradigm, you also essentially removed/broke the feature of having private, local files (that the Workspace owner does NOT want to list in a ignore.conf, for whatever reason), as there is now no longer a difference between the states "Private" and "Added" (especially if the "Always select private files" option is on).

[Wolfram]

Any update on this? The new behaviour makes it very easy to accidentally commit private files that are not supposed to be committed.

[Wolfram]

Looking further into this, the description of the "Always select private files" is confusing: "selecting" suggests the square toggle to the left of the file is automatically applied to private files, for example when Plastic auto-selects candidates, or when you click "Check/Clear all", or select a subtree.
But these files always get "selected", no matter whether this flag is set or not.
The difference seems to be that if that flag is on, selected private files will be automatically ADDED/committed when committing, even when their status is still "Private". When it is off, they are ignored (=the old behaviour).

BUT - and here comes the bug: this onyl works when these files are selected with "Check/clear all", or by selecting a parent directory. When you explicitly (or accidentally) select a single (or multiple) Private files, they will ALWAYS be committed, despite "Always select private files" being off.