Use checkboxes to toggle staging

[joewiz]

Great work so far! I've already made my first commit with the plugin, and it worked very smoothly. Coming from other GUI git clients, such as GitHub Desktop, there are a couple of features I would like to see before I begin using this regularly. I'll put them into issues—this being the first:

Currently staging is controlled with two lists. To stage one or more files, select them in the "unstaged" list and click Stage Selected (or select Stage All).

My proposal would be to collapse these two lists into one, and place a checkbox next to each file. Checking a file stages it; unchecking it unstages it. I think this would simplify the UI for users.

Here screenshot to illustrate this UI in GitHub Desktop:

Note that 1.xml and 3.xml are staged, and 2.xml is unstaged. Note also the checkbox above the list of files which indicates some are stages; clicking this checkbox toggles between staging all and none.

[AlexJitianu]

Hi,

We worked mainly with SourceTree and GitKraken and they use one area for unstaged resources and another for the staged ones. Coming from a Subversion background I found these layouts to be a bit strange (not the most efficient way of using the space) but, thinking that Git users are accustomed with it, we chose a similar layout.

A drawback of the checkbox-based layout (from my point of view) would be that for a large number of resources it might be difficult to make sure you've staged the correct subset (assuming that you need to commit just a subset).

Anyway, it looks like the existing Git clients are divided into two groups: one that uses checkboxes and another that uses two panels.

[tofi86]

This is how Git Tower looks like with checkboxes:

As a frequent git user, I'm familiar with both layouts and don't have a preference...

[joewiz]

@AlexJitianu Ah, that makes sense. It's a reasonable way to go. I wonder, though, if the checkbox method might be a little more natural for users coming from SyncroSVN, which while not entirely the same, does use checkboxes to select files to be committed (changed files default to being selected), if I recall. Tower (which I also use) and GitHub Desktop also default to checked. Anyway, whatever you think is best! Feel free to close this if you decide to keep the current UI.