> No GitHub PR sync for stacks
FWIW, I think the fact that you need client support for this is a bizarre shortcoming of GitHub.
If GitHub just let you review individual commits like Gerrit does, the concept of "PR stacking" would be unnecessary (as it is with Gerrit).
The model of "a PR is just a blob of changes" is a weird baby's toy version of a code review tool IMO!
I highly recommend revup, it allows managing and uploading stacked (or arbitrary trees of) PRs to Github, including adding a comment that shows approximate revision-to-revision diffs if you want it to. I don't actually think that per-commit reviewing obviates the desire for stacked PRs, for example I often have some PRs in my stack that are not yet ready for review or merging.
GitHub does let you review individual commits, at least you can leave comments on them.
All we need is GitHub to support a `Depends on: #123` annotation which would hide commits already in #123 and not let you merge until #123 is merged.
> All we need is GitHub to support a `Depends on: #123` annotation which would hide commits already in #123 and not let you merge until #123 is merged.
You can get an approximation by having the PR target the branch used by #123.
This doesn't work across forks, though, and therefore doesn't compose with GitHub's model where you push your changes to your private fork and then open a PR from there.
There's also no native UI support for it in GitHub -- I'd expect to have a navigation element for stacked PRs like in Gerrit.
This means multiple stacked branches that you need to maintain on your own, doesn't it? That's the annoying part IMO, even when a short script would do or the rebases take a few characters in some efficient git UI.
You can review them but you can't look at the diff between them after they've been amended in response, so it's not actually a usable workflow.
IIUC the typical model is that people just upload new commits like "respond to review comments" and then eventually squash the whole PR into one commit when it's ready.
So basically you are just giving up on the idea that the commit history is part of the artifact you're working on.
You can review a PR commit by commit. But it's not obvious how in the UI. Navigate to the commits tab on the PR page and you can navigate through the commits in the PR and review them one by one. Although it's possible this isn't what you mean.
Github doesn’t understand that all commits can change for review purposes. This is what makes it a ‘toy’ (though I prefer stronger wording here.)
Right, the problem is when I amended one of my patches there's no way for the reviewer to look at a diff between current and previous versions.
ADO handles this by showing a dropdown of 'comment left on update X, currently update Y' with a toggle to show the difference.
I ~hate how ADO handles individual commits (comment left on a single commit is hidden), but I do like the update tracking on a PR as it allows cleaning up the commit tree seamlessly without losing history or comment traceability (less you remove/move files).
Indeed. I wrote a tool for myself to help with that in my reviews: https://github.com/nhaehnle/vctools/tree/main/diff-modulo-ba...
It admittedly doesn't have a lot of polish, but I do use it regularly and I'd be happy to help anybody who is interested in using it.
Yes, I agree, much of the blame lies with GitHub -- but realistically, GitHub isn't going to change to accommodate tools like jj.
Yeah but I just wanted to highlight that a better world exists! People should know that GitHub's toy model isn't the only one available.
Still, you're right that it makes sense to build tools to work around GitHub since there's always gonna be cases where you can't avoid using it.
Yeah, effectively all my programming is at my job, where we use GH Enterprise, so I don't really have a choice. I prefer Gerrit but not up to me.