Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Make quick fixes quicker on Google Project Hosting

Have you ever noticed a bug or typo in your code but not been in a position to fix it? Perhaps you were browsing the code online from your Cr-48, or perhaps you just didn’t have Subversion or Mercurial handy. Today the Google Project Hosting team is announcing a new feature for you: the ability to edit your source code files directly in the browser, in our online editor powered by CodeMirror. Just look for the “edit file” link on files in the online source browser: As you edit, you can preview the diff of your changes so you know exactly what you are committing:

And if you don’t have commit privileges to the project? No problem. Instead of committing your changes, you can file your changes as a patch in the project’s issue tracker.

By lowering the barrier to entry for everyone — project members and users alike — we hope to make it easier for projects to grow and improve. Enjoy!

28 comments:

  1. Sometimes the "barrier to entry" serves a real purpose. Is it possible to use this and have automatic unit-tests execute after each commit? What about honouring source-control hooks?

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  3. Wohhoooooo!!!! No longer have to use Google Gadget Editor now :)

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  4. @meowsqueak The *technical* barrier to entry is still the same: you must be a project member to commit. Either the project owner trusts you with that privilege or they don't. The UX barrier to entry is easier now, however; you can fix a typo without grabbing version control tools. To answer your other questions: Project Hosting has never supported any sort of pre-commit enforcement. We have supported post-commit hooks, however, by sending a web ping to a server of your choice.

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  5. Now I'm gonna stop using eclipse!

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  6. Wow, very cool!

    "Hey dawg, I put some code in your code...."

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  7. This is v. cool. I can't wait for someone to do a GWT based IDE...

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  8. Is there an online-version of eclipse?
    If so, please tell me where I can find it.
    I need it to teach an Android programming class,
    and half my time is wasted installing eclipse.


    gpscruise@ you know

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  9. Interesting, let me ping github about such feature. Does anyone actually still use google project hosting?

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  10. Nice! I'm still waiting for the ability to actually compile my code, like on Compilr.com.

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  11. Very cool.

    Please add a link to the wiki pages that provides the same features. I know committers can already edit the wiki from the browser but users cannot. Being able to edit in this way, and submit a patch, would be great.

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  12. Super cool, now if they would just allow for git repositories on Google Code all would be well :)

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  13. @carterson2 - yeah, check out eclipse orion. Build a web app in a web app!

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  14. Nice feature. I wish you would add more features to make google code hosting more competitive with places like github and bitbucket

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  15. Great feature, thanks :)

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  16. Very usefull, especially the quick patch option

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  17. I can see the barrier for entry for submitting patches dramatically lower. This is fantastic.

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  18. Oooooh, and just when I thought GC was starting to lag behind the competition. Pretty please, make a solid API for this and we could set up all kinds of cool interactions with our website. Imagine how easy it will be to contribute to a JavaDoc here and there!

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  19. This is exactly something I've been looking forward since a long time.

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  20. This is cute, but pointless if you can't run the code you are editing. You make a change to the code and the next person to checkout finds out you broke it because tests don't run, the code isn't evaluated at all. It is shiny but has no substance.

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  21. Does not work on iPad unfortunately!
    Output looks like crap and MobileSafari doesn't support contentEditable. Same problem as with Eclipse Orion.

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  22. Very interesting indeed. I tried it out but on the first file I edited, only the 92 first line (of 209) displayed...
    Using Firefox 3.6.13.

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  23. That is very click. Really like how if you don't have commit access it will auto submit a patch. So awesome. Great work.

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  24. But why would anyone want to do *BLIND* edits without even having the ability to see if the whole thing compiles and passes the tests? In my opinion without the ability to compile and run tests editing in the browser will be limited to fixing localization errors.

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