Gitea: Add inline comments on commits

[tonivj5]

Add comments on commits (not only in PR), I would love to have this feature :smiley:

Reference: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/124, https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/124#issuecomment-419289878

Thanks to gitea's team and contributors :heart:

[LukeOwlclaw]

Sorry, I don't want to be rude nor a smartass, I just want to understand. Is this issue about

Pull/Merge request inline comments

which is supposed to be already supported according to https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/ ?

[techknowlogick]

@LukeOwlclaw this issue is inline comments on commits. Inline comments on code in PRs already (per the docs you linked). also please take this comment same way, I'm a bit sleepy due to jetlag so I apologize if this response doesn't come off as friendly (I tried to make it friendly).

[rakshith-ravi]

@xxxtonixxx is there a PR that currently addresses this?

[tonivj5]

I think no :cry:

[rakshith-ravi]

@techknowlogick I know open source projects hate asking for ETAs, and I really don't want to come off as rude, but I'm just curious how high on the priority list is this in? There doesn't seem to be a milestone listed, so what are the odds that we'll see this implemented in 1.7.x? Is this something the team is actively planning to work on or is it deferred for sometime later? Just curious so that I can set my expectations clear 😅

[techknowlogick]

@rakshith-ravi sadly it won’t be in 1.7 as we are a in a feature freeze for that release, as for ETAs I cant say, as for the project we don’t have a roadmap and things are added to the project as PRs happen. That means even a non-team member could work on this, if you or someone you know has Holland skills. As a side note you don’t come off as rude and I really appreciate how you asked as it was really kind :)

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs during the next 2 weeks. Thank you for your contributions.

[tonivj5]

Not yet, please :cry:

[sci4me]

Yeah this would be fantastic!

[6543]

Vote

[lunny]

So If we can comment on any commit. We should consider some implementation things below:

1) Where should the comments stored, currently all comments stored with an issue(pr)
2) We have to notify all related users(who?) via UI/mail and etc.

[rakshith-ravi]

I'd recommend a structure like this -
There would be two different kinds of comment on commits: One on the upstream code and one on the PR.

• Both the comment on commit can be linked to the repo (the repo ID as the primary key). That way, Even when the PR gets merged, the comment still stays. We could use a composite key of the commit hash and the repo ID as the primary key.
• As for the notification, we could perhaps notify all the users who are contributors of the repo. If it's a PR, I guess the PR owner will also be notified.

If I knew GoLang better, I would've implemented this myself. Unfortunately, I can only contribute in terms of software architecture

[zeripath]

I suspect we should leverage git notes or git notes-like behaviour for this. I suspect that putting this in to the database is only going to cause trouble. I wonder if the comments on PRs should do the same.

[zeripath]

@rakshith-ravi If you can program in an imperative language you can program in go. It's really not a very difficult language if you can get past its idiosyncrasies.

[lunny]

PR comments have been implemented. I think we are talking about commit comment without a PR.

[BaxAndrei]

Yes, like on github

[0x416c69]

Vote.

Gitea really lacks this important feature. Everything else I could live on without but not this.

[guillep2k]

@0x416c69 Just so I understand your use case, why comments are so important in a specific commit? I've seen GitHub has that, but I never could picture a proper scenario for this. Commits get quickly lost in the sea of blobs....

[BaxAndrei]

I use this function. Especially to signal to the people who sent the commit that something is wrong, exempting me from opening an issue. It is also useful if I want to add something extra to that commit or mention something.

[lunny]

We also need refactor notification system to notify via ui/mail/webhook and etc.

[0x416c69]

@guillep2k Best way possible for me to talk about a certain commit is the commit comment. Although I could just stick with a messenger and a group talk, place the commit link/hash and talk about it there with my team but it will get really messy and the track of the conversation will be lost very quickly.

As a _basic and common_ user of git, this I think is the most needed feature.

[jcfigueiredo]

@0x416c69 Just so I understand your use case, why comments are so important in a specific commit? I've seen GitHub has that, but I never could picture a proper scenario for this. Commits get quickly lost in the see of blobs....

We use it a lot for code reviewing PRs before merging to master.

• 2ȼ

[techknowlogick]

@jcfigueiredo the review functionality already exists in PRs where you can comment on lines of code.

[Albirew]

this "may" also be useful to reference a commit or part of it to an issue without touching issue itself (examples: "_may make issue #1 reappear_", "_this exact part breaks PR !2_", etc.) or discussing about a specific part of code.

Again, these can already be done the other way around (eg:"_commit b822518e396a569b89aab6d621b01eefe723caa7 may make this issue reappear_", "_the changes on modules/setting/queue.go lines 58-59 of commit c779ac12c971a4347d085f8dbca7531faab16221 breaks this PR_", etc.)

[gerdemann]

This is an important feature for us. Is there anything we can do to get the feature?
Maybe a sponsorship would help?

[findsynonyms]

It is a useful feature.

[AllTaken]

Yeah, this would make code reviews much easier for us.

We do "atomic" commits, as part of our workflow, meaning that each commit is easy to review by itself, but a pull request can be quite large and not so easy to review as a whole.

It is also much easier to review each commit with its commit message.

[cknoll]

To add another use case: education.

Students create and maintain their code in a repo and the supervisor wants to comment on specific lines of code. Usually their is no workflow with pull requests.

To be honest for real applicability in education it should be _easily_ possible to comment on every line of every file, not just the lines which changed in the respective commit. Reason: students which just have started using git, often do not have a good commit practice (complicated commit order, frequent changes on the same lines, bad commit messages). Commenting on the cumulated state would be a lot easier.

It might worth to mention that the education system inevitably works as multiplicator: tools which are used by university students are likely to be used by the professionals they evolve after graduation.