FR: auto-refresh log

[ilyagr]

I wish there was a way to have gitk refresh its view (like pressing F5) automatically every few seconds.

If it could be smart enough to use a file watcher, even better.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76031112/does-gitk-have-an-option-to-automatically-refresh-its-view-every-2-seconds-f

(I know FRs are probably not top priority at the moment, but I still might share a few, for discussion and just in case).

[j6t]

For my use cases, automatic refresh would be disastrous. After an update of the repository (new commit, new branch, reset of a branch, ...) I need to know where the branch or current commit was before the refresh happens so that I know with which old and new state I have to compare. An uncontrolled refresh would destroy the old state and I would have to hunt down the old state with other tools.

[ilyagr]

I'm certainly not proposing that automatic refresh becomes mandatory.

I often run some version of watch jj log --graph --oneline in another pane while I work, and gitk would be a nice replacement for that.

---

For your use-case, I wonder if it would be nice to allow one to mark commits in gitk, so that you could "mark" the commits you care about, refresh the view, and then see both old and new commits. Or perhaps one could use lightweight tags for this.

Another interesting feature for your usecase would be for gitk to simply remember (and perhaps be able to export?) all the past states, similarly to https://github.com/blacknon/hwatch.

But I don't often use gitk this way, so I'm unsure.

[j6t]

For your use-case, I wonder if it would be nice to allow one to mark commits in gitk, so that you could "mark" the commits you care about, refresh the view, and then see both old and new commits. Or perhaps one could use lightweight tags for this.

This does not help, because usually I do not know in advance that I will need the old state, and I cannot mark all old state just in case I maybe need it.

[hlovdal]

I think this can be solved by adding support for calling reloadcommits (the shift F5 handler function) when receiving a SIGUSR1 signal. That way @ilyagr can write a wrapper script that sends USR1 every few seconds to a gitk instance it launches.