tag editor layout

[JonatasAmaral]

Rethink tag editor

I'm think there's room for improvement on the (just released) tagging workflow #1381

The view

The "tag editor" could have two pannel, for tag name and message, the second optional: (similar to how the ": - execute custom command" is shown)

┌─ tag name ───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ some-tag                                                     │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─ message (optional) ─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ...                                                          │
│                                                              │
│                                                              │
│                                                              │
│                                                              │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

How it would behave

• pressing T on pannel (commit or branch as on #2421), don't need the mid-step menu for selecting lightweight or annotated
  • typping on tag name box and pressing ⏎, creates a lightweight
  • pressing tab on "tag name" box, move cursor to "message" box. Tag with message becomes annotated
• message box could handle multi-line message.
  • For this ⏎ add lines, and ctrl+⏎ should be used to "submit"
  • Or could have a "submit" button bellow. So you ⥂ from message, and ⏎ on button (not optimal)

Type evaluation flow

I'm not familiar with Go, but here's how i thinks the fields state translate to a "codable steps" on submitting:

Has message?
│       ╭────────────────────────────────────╮
├─ No ──┤ "git tag {{tag_name}} {{branch}}"  │
│       ╰────────────────────────────────────╯
│
╰─ Yes ─╮
        Is message single line?
        │          ╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
        ├─ Yes ────┤ "git tag -a {{tag_name}} -m {{message}} {{branch}}"  │
        │          ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
        ╰─ No ──╮
                │  ╭───────────────────────────────────╮
                ╰──┤ for line in {{message}} :         │
                   │      final_msg += "-m {{line}} "  │
                   │ end                               │
                   ╰───────────────────────────────────╯
                   ↓ then
                   ╭─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
                   │ `git tag -a {{tag_name}} {{final_msg}} {{branch}}`  │
                   ╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Alternatives

For the case of those who prefer to open their editor to write (probably highly complex) multi-line tag messages, a cumbersome way that comes to my mind is, if focus on message box, and ctrl+⏎ without writing nothing, open the editor for message (aka: runs "git tag -a {{tag_name}} {{branch}}") That would make the flow drawn above a bit more complex, and doesn't worth represent here

Wanna hear what you guys think.

---

offtopic

That's unrelated to editor itself, but i personally thing that tags should get the date of the commit pointing to, what can be achieved setting a VAR_ENV on run command, like so:

GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$(git show $3 --format=%aD | head -1)"

Whats do you guys thing about setting it by default on tagging over lazygit? If it is not much of a thing for everybody, how am i suppose to enable it for my self only?

[mark2185]

The suggested "tag editor" is awfully reminiscent of the new commit message editor, i.e. tab moving the cursor to the description panel.

Nothing else to add, just pointing that out.

[JonatasAmaral]

Yep, almost exactly the same. Should wait a bit for that to merge, and turn this to "make tags just like commits" then?

And testing this PR on that uffizzi link, i've now think that the ⥂ > ⏎ has quite the same effort of ctrl + ⏎. Making that point unnecessary too. Although still a valid alternative maybe

Now only the possibility to write message on external editor, if user wants it, is left open. And that would be a good improvement, for tag, commit, and everything else

[jesseduffield]

@mark2185 I thought the exact same thing just now upon reading this issue.

I agree we should use the new commit message panel for this (and all things that have a one mandatory field and one optional multi-line field)

As for bringing up an external editor, that's worth more consideration. I reckon that deserves its own issue

[jesseduffield]

@JonatasAmaral as for GIT_COMMITTER_DATE, I'd prefer to stick to the default behaviour in regular git, but am open to suggestions about how to set that in general (including with commit messages)

[jesseduffield]

This is implemented in https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit/pull/2809