Correcting comment mistakes and viewing comments in general

mattGreatPond · Post by **mattGreatPond** » Wed May 05, 2004 11:47 am

Situation: Just created a label, goofed the comment

(left out some import info). Can I edit that comment? I couldn’t find a way, so we deleted the label and created another one. (Is there a way to prevent just anyone from deleting labels?)

When viewing the history, I can see the comments. But there are places where the comment is much longer than the space in the listview column – especially with multi-line comments. My first thought was to double-click on the item in the History Explorer that I was interested in. This brings up the Version Details dialog. The top 4 items in this dialog appear to be from the first four listview columns in the history explorer – to provide complete details you only need to add the two remaining columns (action and comment). Currently the dialog only shows the Change Set Comment. I know I can double click the comment listview column border to expand it, but this is awkward and could require horizontal scrolling. When viewing the history, I’d like to be able to see the full comments quickly and easily.

Post by **jclausius** » Wed May 05, 2004 12:11 pm

it is a little tedious, but have you tried using the mouse over "balloon". it is somewhat useful, and we've logged an enhancement suggestion to keep the balloon up a while longer.

the gui on the history explorer is not well designed for this purpose. however, we've had some other users make useful suggestions regarding viewing comments from the "details" dialog:

1) place a horiz scroll on the comments text box
2) place a splitter between the comments and the change set detail - so the comment / details can be resized.
3) place prev / next buttons so history can be "scrolled" from the details dialog.

would something like that help? would you like me to add you to the list of users who've requested this feature?

mattGreatPond · Post by **mattGreatPond** » Wed May 05, 2004 12:30 pm

Sure, add me to the list.

And as far as correcting mistakes in comments, the way to do it would be to delete and start over?

Post by **jclausius** » Wed May 05, 2004 12:46 pm

do you want to edit the comment of a label or of a transaction or both?

just to let you inside the current line of thinking. a modification of any kind (even editing a comment for mistakes) breaks the contract of what happened "historically". regardless, i'll log an enhancement request for this.

as for changing a label comment, currently, a delete / re-create is the only way to change the label's comment.

mattGreatPond · Post by **mattGreatPond** » Wed May 05, 2004 3:11 pm

jclausius wrote:just to let you inside the current line of thinking. a modification of any kind (even editing a comment for mistakes) breaks the contract of what happened "historically"

I fully understand this and it makes great sense. But in the real world mistakes get made (too often in mine

), and I hate when I screw up source control stuff - I just want to make it right. This is probably a feature in the same class as Obliterate... in a perfect world you don't need it, but in the real world its pretty darn handy.
Also, I see that it is very easy to remove labels and I was wondering, given the current line of thinking, why this was so

Post by **jclausius** » Wed May 05, 2004 3:43 pm

yes, the label comments can easily be "modifed" by deleting / recreating, but the same cannot be said for transaction comments.

would you like to see the feature to modify label comments, but not tx comments?

mattGreatPond · Post by **mattGreatPond** » Thu May 06, 2004 8:13 am

Wherever someone enters a comment, there is a possibility for error. It should be possible to fix these errors without having to undo / redo the operation. But, we recognize that modifying a comment breaks the historical contract. My view is that it should be possible to fix mistakes, but you have to take deliberate steps to do so. For example, I don’t want a new employee to be able to accidentally delete a label for a past milestone and really screw things up because they are learning the system. If I want to really delete a label, I either have to have permission to do it, or I use the Vault Admin application. If I want to change a comment, I either have to have permission to do it, or I use the Vault Admin application. Perhaps the Vault Admin app allows you to view the repository, but with enhanced privileges – this would be that deliberate step, just like you have to take a deliberate step to permanently delete things. What do you think?

dan · Post by **dan** » Thu May 06, 2004 9:03 am

Those are very good ideas (allowing edit of comments only through the admin tool, as well as deleting labels only through the admin tool).

The deleting of labels is a bit tricky though, since a lot of folks will label and build every 15 minutes or so, but only want to keep the labels for important builds. They would need a way to easily remove the excess labels - especially for builds that didn't work, or didn't pass smoketests, etc.

So, we'll need to think about this a little more, and see if there is a way to make everyone happy

One other note is that you can only create and delete labels if you have the Add/Rename/Delete level of permssion on a folder (which is the highest level).

mattGreatPond · Post by **mattGreatPond** » Thu May 06, 2004 9:22 am

dan wrote:The deleting of labels is a bit tricky though, since a lot of folks will label and build every 15 minutes or so, but only want to keep the labels for important builds. They would need a way to easily remove the excess labels - especially for builds that didn't work, or didn't pass smoketests, etc.

That’s interesting. I've never really thought much about deleting labels since they are so lightweight - and SourceSafe doesn't let you delete them anyway. I can envision being screwed if a label was accidentally deleted (because that would be like an :twisted:Obliterate:twisted: - there's no getting that label back, right?). That's why I think its essential to take some explicit step to change things. That step could be admin, or it could be as simple as a message box confirmation. To me, using the Admin tool enforces usage consistency, but then, I don't have to worry about keeping customers happy.

arden_dan · Post by **arden_dan** » Fri May 07, 2004 4:20 am

Just want to add my support to this..

In the unlikely event that a developer makes a mistake

, it would be nice to change a transaction comment.

We use our bug tracking issue numbers as comments, and sometimes a typo has been known to creep in. In VSS we could modify the comment, admittedly a file at a time.. but it would be really nice if we could modify a transaction comment, in the Admin Tool would be ideal for us.

Thanks.

Post by **jclausius** » Fri May 07, 2004 7:53 am

thanks for the feedback.

i've added your name to the list of users requesting this feature.

GregM · Post by **GregM** » Fri May 07, 2004 2:58 pm

mattGreatPond wrote:I've never really thought much about deleting labels since they are so lightweight - and SourceSafe doesn't let you delete them anyway.

From the details screen for the label, clear the text from the label field. It will ask you if you're sure, and then delete the label.

GregM · Post by **GregM** » Fri May 07, 2004 3:00 pm

I've always been a bit annoyed that SourceOffSite didn't let you edit typos in your checkin comments, having to start VSS just to fix the comment is a bit of a pain. Not being able to do it at all in Vault is going to be even more annoying. (We're still getting ready to move from VSS to Vault.)

dan · Post by **dan** » Fri May 07, 2004 3:06 pm

We will bump this up in priority, since it seems to be a sore point. Especially since you all are gold support users

mattGreatPond · Post by **mattGreatPond** » Mon May 10, 2004 7:58 am

GregM wrote:From the details screen for the label, clear the text from the label field. It will ask you if you're sure, and then delete the label.

Wow

, I don't know how that one escaped me all this time. Thanks for mentioning that