Commit view UX

Some issues with the commit view:

It only shows 20 files at once, which is understandable for performance, except for some major UX issues …

  1. As a user, I want to know if a certain file is present in this commit’s changes.
  2. As a user, I want to browse to a certain file.

Both of these are majorly hampered.

What is the fastest way to achieve #1? You can step through the pages manually and examine all the filenames. The “Files changed” pop-out menu shows all 20 files of the current page, but that’s a couple clicks that you have to perform every page. Or what I do is slightly faster: Ctrl+F, Enter, Page Down, Next page, repeat.

Ideally, #1 is achieved with a tree view or a filename search that searches all the files (not just the 20 of the present page).

The use case of #2 is to find the file and go to it. This also is hard. Even if you know that a commit does contain a file change, you don’t know which page it’s on. And the Filename Filter can’t help because it only lists files on the current page. So you end up manually execute a binary search on page numbers, paired with Ctrl+F.

Ideally use case #2 is satisfied with a file listing of all files in the commit, preferably a tree view.

I remember at one time GitLab’s commit view showed all files at once, and then this pagination feature was added, which to me was a degradation. I’ve been waiting for it to get better, but it’s been a few years it hasn’t, so I’m wondering if it’s even on the radar, which is why I’m posting.

(We’re currently on GitLab Enterprise Edition 15.1.3-ee)

Are there any existing Issues tracking these UX issues?

1 Like

This also bothers me sooooo much. Hope they fix it, some day.

Just for references, the OP also creates this issue #374034 for it. Thanks for this, too!