I hoped they would fix line wrapping - which should be a relatively simply task - by now.
This is a very needed feature for projects that work a lot with text files (such as markdown) that do not automatically break on set widths (e.g. [1])
I've already contacted Github support with this request months ago, but no one's stepped up with a fix. Maybe this can get escalated somehow? Heck, I'd even submit a pull request if it was possible for github/github.
I'm not sure I understand what you are referring to. Are you saying you want the long lines to be wrapped in the diff display? If so, I really can't see how this is an issue with GitHub since this is how the unified diff output is suppose to look like. Displaying it any differently would be misleading since it is a long line.
I don't find it too misleading. But long line could be made to look even more different (from multiple short lines) by having distinct color, typography marks etc.
Why not add line breaks using your text editor? That will also help your collaborators who prefer not to wrap long lines.
I have a hook in my .emacs that turns on auto-fill-mode whenever I open a .md or .rst file. I'd assume there's something analogous for vim or whichever editor you normally work with.
In text, hard line breaks can be content rather than presentation, so adding them to the raw file is not always desirable. It would be fantastic if the github web viewers offered this feature.
Also, won't it mess up diffs for wrapped text? If you add a few words in the middle of a paragraph and then re-wrap the text, won't the contents of every single following line be altered and show up as a diff?
Unified and side by side diffs were never really meant for diffing documents. If you do go the route of introducing line breaks to improve readability and/or editing, you really need to use a different diffing algorithm. What I've found useful is the Google diff match and patch library.
Since we're touching code reviews, I'll plug my userscript here. It's useful for me for code reviews of big commits: you can fold the files, mark them as reviewed etc. and all of this is persisted in the local storage. You can install it from [1] if you know userscripts or read [2] otherwise.
I'm not sure if their stance has changed and I can't seem to find the answer that was given, but it had to do with aesthetics/layout. Basically their web layout width was too restrictive for showing side by side diffs. They only really have two options:
1) Do what Bitbucket does and have the side by side diff be a pop up window. I personally find this to be jarring and unnatural.
2) Combine both elements. It's what I do for my product. To better understand this take a look at
and switch to the side by side view. If you hover over the line number, you'll be able to see the diff line in unified mode below. With this setup they can provide side by side without having the user to constantly scroll left to right.
Agree with the adjacent post that this is a complementary feature request and I also really want it. There is a browser plugin that can sort of get you there, but it's pretty brittle.
> and the feature is available anywhere we render diffs
No, it's not available on gist.github.com.
Sure, they may (or may not) port it over after some time, but I just don't get why they can't use the same code in the first place. Why is GitHub reinventing the wheel in for its very own sub-site?
I was just looking for this over the weekend, and found it this morning.
When I talk about code to collaborators in email or chat, I always try to link to the file on github rather than just giving a path. I much prefer to recieve feedback that way. Maybe i'm not good enough with my text editor, but it is just a lot faster to get to the file that way.
If any githubbers are reading, it would be great to be able to filter my organization's timeline events out of my personal timeline events. It's been bugging me for years. Thanks.
This is a very needed feature for projects that work a lot with text files (such as markdown) that do not automatically break on set widths (e.g. [1])
I've already contacted Github support with this request months ago, but no one's stepped up with a fix. Maybe this can get escalated somehow? Heck, I'd even submit a pull request if it was possible for github/github.
[1] - https://github.com/cryptoparty/handbook/pull/72/files