Some basic questions

[Ramblurr]

Gitbutler is very intriguing but I'm having some basic troubles:

1. I've worked on a branch, committed some changes, now I want to merge/rebase that onto main right away. Is this only possible via PR? Cannot I just say "fast foward merge this onto main"? This is the only info I could find related to this, but that is a whole new cloud-based feature. I'm not looking for code review, I just want to make some commits then pop them over to main.

2. Is it possible to stage hunks of the same file onto different gitbutler branches? If this is supported, I haven't been able to discoverthe UIX for it.

3. Unassigned -> Tree view: it is not possible to drag folders anywhere, this is quite a pain in large projects or mono repos

4. If I assign and commit changes to a file in one gitbutler branch, then I make more changes to the file and try to drag-drop/assign it to a different gitbutler branch, the file does not get assigned to the second branch, it goes into the assign list for the original branch... this seems very strange?

5. When I run git log in my repo I see

but that link is dead: https://docs.gitbutler.com/features/virtual-branches/integration-branch

[Byron]

Thanks for trying it out!

GitButler right now is still a bit special as it really wants to push you into its unique workflow. It's something we are actively trying to fix, but until then, many standard workflows aren't possible.

1. I've worked on a branch, committed some changes, now I want to merge/rebase that onto main right away. Is this only possible via PR? Cannot I just say "fast foward merge this onto main"? This is the only info I could find related to this, but that is a whole new cloud-based feature. I'm not looking for code review, I just want to make some commits then pop them over to main.

This is unfortunately not possible right now.

2. Is it possible to stage hunks of the same file onto different gitbutler branches? If this is supported, I haven't been able to discoverthe UIX for it.

That should be possible. You can start a commit in the other branch, and then select the file in question, and check or uncheck the lines and hunks you are interested in.

3. Unassigned -> Tree view: it is not possible to drag folders anywhere, this is quite a pain in large projects or mono repos

This isn't implemented yet, but it's also not the first time this comes up.

4. If I assign and commit changes to a file in one gitbutler branch, then I make more changes to the file and try to drag-drop/assign it to a different gitbutler branch, the file does not get assigned to the second branch, it goes into the assign list for the original branch... this seems very strange?

In GitButler, changes can be 'locked' to a lane as they wouldn't apply cleanly to any other lane anyway. There are heuristics to figure that out, but it's possible that these have false positives or negatives.
In any way, I don't think GitButler always communicates this clearly, so what's actually a feature ends up being strange.

5. When I run git log in my repo I see

but that link is dead: https://docs.gitbutler.com/features/virtual-branches/integration-branch

Thanks so much! Here is a fix, and I will also try to get a redirect setup.

I hope these answers help a little, please do share if anything else comes up.

[Ramblurr]

Many thanks for the reply.

1: This is quite unfortunate, I'm trying out gitbutler on some solo projects where I don't want to involve Github, or any forge at all.
2: Hm, I couldn't discover how to do this, I'll play with it again on Monday.
3-5: reasonable answers, thanks!

FWIW I was turned on to gitbutler because I tend to work (for better or worse) on multiple tasks at the same time. I make heavy use of emacs magit and git add -p to try to tease out focused commits in the end. Gitbutler's multiple concurrent branches really appeals to me. Being forced to PR or even touch a forge is quite a turn off however.

[Byron]

Being forced to PR or even touch a forge is quite a turn off however.

It's a similar situation here. GitButler has to be a normal Git client first, otherwise too many users won't be represented and won't find it as useful as it genuinely can be. We are absolutely working on fixing that.