[Feedback] Git integration

[matoous]

The VCS (version control system) now has better support for diffing, git history navigation, and more. I would love to hear any feedback regarding this feature, suggestion for improvements, bug reports and more.

[trojkat]

@matoous first of all, thank you for all your time and energy you're putting into this great project!

I haven't tested the whole Git integration yet, but just a general comment for now: currently, the project documentation reflects the state of the main branch, which might be confusing for people using the latest release, as things mentioned in the docs might not be available for them yet. I would expect to get (by default) the documentation for the latest release and the ability to switch to a different version (including the main branch) with some kind of dropdown, just like in the Django docs.

[trojkat]

For the VCS itself:

1. I love to build custom menus to aggregate commands related to similar operations (pickers, buffers, git). I would love to see a common prefix like :vcs- or :vc- that would help with discovering those commands in the command palette.

From my perspective, it would make more sense to have a single binding Space g to enter the Git menu, from which we could pick:

c -> changed files
d -> diff
h -> file history
H -> repo history
b -> blame
i -> inspect the change at the cursor
t -> toggle inline blame

2. When inspecting a change at the cursor, it would be handy to have a keybinding to revert the change in that pop-up window.

3. I would love to see a command that could give me a remote URL to the file/line in the repo where the cursor is so I could share that with someone via IM.

[leo-unglaub]

I am with you, following the usual commands structure would be ideal. People are just used to that workflow and it is perfectly extendable for custom workflows!

This got added in 370e72b

[matoous]

Further cleaned up, please let me know if you find it more ergonomic now. Still testing things out.

[trojkat]

Nice! Point 1. ✅

[trojkat]

For the point 3 I'm using this script

git-remote-url

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

# Arguments
WORKTR="${1:-}"
FILE_PATH="${2:-}"
START_LINE="${3:-}"
END_LINE="${4:-}"

# Validate required arguments
if [ -z "$WORKTR" ] || [ -z "$FILE_PATH" ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <workdir_absolute_path> <file_absolute_path> [start_line] [end_line]" >&2
    exit 1
fi

# Ensure git is available and workdir is valid
if ! git -C "$WORKTR" rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo "Error: '$WORKTR' is not a valid git repository." >&2
    exit 1
fi

# 1. Compute relative path from the workdir to the file
REL_PATH=$(realpath --relative-to="$WORKTR" "$FILE_PATH")

# 2. Extract and clean the remote origin URL
REMOTE_URL=$(git -C "$WORKTR" config --get remote.origin.url || true)
if [ -z "$REMOTE_URL" ]; then
    echo "Error: No 'remote.origin.url' configured for this repository." >&2
    exit 1
fi

# Remove trailing .git if present
BASE_URL="${REMOTE_URL%.git}"

# Convert SSH URLs (e.g., git@github.com:owner/repo.git) to HTTPS base URLs
if [[ "$BASE_URL" =~ ^git@([^:]+):(.*)$ ]]; then
    HOST="${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"
    PATH_PART="${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
    BASE_URL="https://${HOST}/${PATH_PART}"
fi

# 3. Get the current commit hash (preferred for permanent permalinks) or active branch
REF=$(git -C "$WORKTR" rev-parse HEAD)

# 4. Format URL structure and line anchors based on the provider (GitHub vs GitLab)
LINE_SUFFIX=""
if [[ "$BASE_URL" == *github.com* ]]; then
    BLOB_PART="blob"
    if [ -n "$START_LINE" ]; then
        if [ -n "$END_LINE" ] && [ "$END_LINE" -ne "$START_LINE" ]; then
            LINE_SUFFIX="#L${START_LINE}-L${END_LINE}"
        else
            LINE_SUFFIX="#L${START_LINE}"
        fi
    fi
elif [[ "$BASE_URL" == *gitlab* ]]; then
    BLOB_PART="-/blob"
    if [ -n "$START_LINE" ]; then
        if [ -n "$END_LINE" ] && [ "$END_LINE" -ne "$START_LINE" ]; then
            LINE_SUFFIX="#L${START_LINE}-${END_LINE}"
        else
            LINE_SUFFIX="#L${START_LINE}"
        fi
    fi
else
    # Default fallback (GitHub-style)
    BLOB_PART="blob"
    if [ -n "$START_LINE" ]; then
        if [ -n "$END_LINE" ] && [ "$END_LINE" -ne "$START_LINE" ]; then
            LINE_SUFFIX="#L${START_LINE}-L${END_LINE}"
        else
            LINE_SUFFIX="#L${START_LINE}"
        fi
    fi
fi

# 5. Assemble final URL
FINAL_URL="${BASE_URL}/${BLOB_PART}/${REF}/${REL_PATH}${LINE_SUFFIX}"
echo "$FINAL_URL" | wl-copy

Just replace the wl-copy from the last line with the correct copy-to-clipboard command for your system.

I'm using it with this custom keybinding

[keys.normal.space.g]
label = "Git"
u = { label = "Copy remote URL", command = ":sh git-remote-url %{workspace_directory} %{file_path_absolute} %{selection_line_start} %{selection_line_end}" }

[warmwaffles]

Is this included in the 0.1.2 release?

[trojkat]

No, that's why I've mentioned the docs versioning.

[trojkat]

@warmwaffles now it's available in v0.1.3

[warmwaffles]

I flipped over to just running from main. It's how I ran Helix and praying @matoous never breaks it for long 😄

[rcieri]

This feature is awesome! Git interface has always been the thing missing from Helix.

One nit is the git-history picker. It would be nice to have a preview with either the list of files changed on that commit or the overall diff.

[dominiq-eu]

Just discovered this project as long-time helix and vim user. vcs sounds like a general vsc support, but as far as I could see, it's git for now. What do you think about having a vcs.toml like the languages.toml to actually configure different vcs like jj, mercurial, etc.

Thanks for the project looks like it has some QoL features that I miss in helix. I'll give it a shot.

[matoous]

Heya, indeed, the goal was/is to support arbitrary VCS "backends", the next release will generalize this a bit to keep the VCS support agnostic to git, mercurial, etc.