My Visual Studio plugin wishlist

[Soho]

Hi,

I just wanted to share some random wishes for the Visual Studio plugin from the top of my minds.

• Better support for keyboard shortcuts. I would like to be able to perform all common source control operations using the keyboard. I am working faster that way.
  

• I would like to be able to do diff, merge, keyboard shortcuts in the pending changes view opened with the "check in" context menu entry in the solution explorer. In this view I can only filter, write a comment, refresh and perform the check in. I would like to do all the other stuff that I can do in the pending changes view opened through View -> Plastic SCM. I am really missing the diff, if nothing else.
  

• I would very much like all pending changes views to show the same pending changes. A pending changes view launched from View -> Plastic SCM, the solution explorer context or the standalone Plastic GUI often show different sets of files. There may be a reason why it is difficult to show, say, added files, in the other pending changes views, but that should imply that it is impossible. Different files in the different pending changes often, almost daily, makes me or some other team member commit a partial changeset not consisting of all changed files. I realize that off solution files should not be shown in the solution explorer "check in" pending changes, but I would expect added files to appear in the View -> Plastic SCM and the standalone GUI.
  

• Display the current branch in the branch explorer view. It is a bit anoying to start the workspace working info view just to get this information. A simple color coding of the current branch would be sufficient. The missing indication of current branch has lead to merges between wrong branches several times.
  

• I would like to be able to have a check in context menu for solution folders in the solution explorer to check in all changes in a particular solution folder. I would also like files not in a project like test-lists in Solution Items to appear in the check in pending changes.
  

• I would also very much like transactional commits. In the early days of source control, like CVS and Source Sage, commits were not transactional, this created a lot of problems. This was fixes in later generations of source control like SVN and TFS, but apparently Plastic uses a non-transactional commit strategy, which has caused my team a lot of clean up work now and then. What I mean by non-transactional is that if a check in for several projects breaks mid-way, the all projects that sucessfully checked in before the breaking project are committed in a changeset, which effectively yields a broken build for anyone updating that branch. I haven seen this issue in a while though, so perhaps it has been fixed in later versions.
  

• Button or shortcut to removed all identical (non changed) files in the pending changes view. I have missed this sooo many times. It is rather annoying to launch a command prompt every time you want to clean up the pending changes view.
  

[Soho]

Oh, another thing. TFS has this lovely in-editor source control context menu. It is really convenient to have access to checkin, diff, history and blaming without having to locate the file in the solution explorer. So a wish is some more context menu entries besides the method history.

[manu]

Hi Soho!

thanks for all the feedback!

I'll check the TFS editor!

About displaying the current branch, in PlasticSCM 4.0 you are able to see your working changeset, and when the branch explorer is opened is automatically focused on it.

Regards,

manu

[Soho]

I'll check the TFS editor!

By editor I ment the visual studio code editor, not a specific TFS editor. Sorry if I was unclear. My point was, that it is very nice to have source control at hand where you need it the most, that is often while editing code, not while fooling around in the solution explorer.

TFS (and other source control systems) extends the code editor context menu with common source control actions available for that source code file.

[Soho]

Another old annoying thing to the wishlist:

If deleting checked out items, something that happens frequently during refactoring sessions, the file is removed from the project and folder, but not from the folder revision. Plastic gives an error message, that checked out files cannot be removed, but removes it anyway from the project. This results in a "ghost" file reappearing in the file system next time the folder is updated with a "get latest".

Either the plugin should prevent Visual Studio from removing the file until it has been checked in or it better yet, the dialog should present some options like "Cancel delete", "Undo checkout and delete".

[danipen]

Hi Soho,

I think that all missing features that you're looking for are implemented in Plastic SCM 4.0 (all but the keyboard shortcuts). Also we've just fixed a problem when switching to a branch that changes the .sln file, it was not correctly reloaded. This will be released in the next Plastic SCM release.

The "removing checked out files" will be available also in the next release.

We're working on adding a "source control context menu" in the text editor and also creating a Plastic SCM toolbar for VS studio. We'll implement it ASAP.

Thanks for your feedback.

[Soho]

Wow, that sounds awesome. I am looking forward to switching to 4.0. Currently I am waiting for a smooth 3.0 -> 4.0 transition script. Also, we are in the middle of two major product releases.