Code Review Mode For History Tab

[JosephTLyons]

Describe the feature or problem you’d like to solve

It would be nice to be able to somehow get some more screen real estate for reviewing the code in previous commits. Currently, if you are in the History tab, you will have 2 lists open. The commit list and the changed files list. If you are only reviewing the code for one commit, it would be nice to be able to hide the History / Changes list, to gain more horizontal space for the diffs. Being able to see the code directly as it is, versus having it soft wrap to the next line (which happens quite frequently on smaller displays), would help me in code review. Essentially, it would be nice to have a view that is more like the Changes tab (just showing the files with changes) for the History tab.

Proposed solution

There are a few ways this could be done:

1. As I previously discussed, it could be as simple as allowing the user to hide the "Changes / History" list. Currently, we cannot fully close that list, which takes up a good portion of screen real estate on smaller laptops.
2. It could be more advanced, such as a button somewhere in the diff UI that opens up a modal window that is as large as the current UI (or roughly the same size). This modal would mostly just contain the diff and the list of files associated with that commit.

Number 2 is actually my preference, as it seems to make more sense. Firstly, having to hide the Changes / History tab, as suggested in number 1, could lead to minor confusion to others, since there would be no way to tell if you were in the History tab or the Changes tab. The user would then also have to open that list to be able to change between Changes and History. With having a modal pop up, as suggested in number 2, the user would know to close it when they were done, which would bring them back to their normal view of the UI. This being said, I suspect that number 1 is much more simple to implement, which may make it the more attractive option, if this feature was ever considered.

I think the main concern for me is having a diff window that is so narrow that lines soft wrap onto the next line, which makes code reviews a bit harder (at least for someone like me). So the main focus for me would be some mode that would allow the diff to span the entire width of the screen.

I also know that there have been many requests to have side-by-side diffs. Side-by-side diffs require much more width than the inline diffs. If the side-by-side diff feature is even being contemplated as a future feature, this feature may make implementing it a bit more realistic.

[tierninho]

@JosephTLyons Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful write-up and also for the suggestions! Gaining more screen real estate for code review would indeed be optimal, but as of right now we are not focused on this area.

I also agree that option 2 is probably the better route. The only workaround I can think of is to use full-screen mode, but perhaps you are already doing so?

Thank you for using Desktop and will update this issue if anything changes!