Blame
SmartGit’s Blame window displays the history information for a single file to help you track down the commit in which a certain portion of code was introduced into the repository. You can open the Blame window by selecting a file in the Files view and invoking Query|Blame from the top menu, or by clicking the file and selecting Blame from the context menu. The Blame window consists of a Document view and a History of current line view.
Document view
The Document view is divided into three parts:
- Controls at the top of the view
- A read-only text view on the right
- An info area on the left.
With the top controls, you can:
- Specify the View Commit at which the text view will display the file contents. This does not change the currently checked out commit in your Working Tree.
- Specify how to Highlight lines in the text view:
- Changes Since - The color chosen for a particular line reflects whether the line is ‘older’ or ‘newer’ than the specified Commit to the right. More precisely, the color reflects whether the date when the line was last modified lies before or after the date of the commit.
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Age - The color chosen for a particular line lies somewhere ‘between’ the two colors used for the oldest and the newest commit in which the file was modified, and thus reflects the line’s relative ‘age’.
You can choose between two age criteria for determining the line color, either:
- Commit Index - Refers to the relative position in the relevant commit range (first commit will be color 1, second commit in color 2, etc.)
- or Time which refers to the commit date, i.e. the point in time at which the commit was created. Multiple commits made on the same day will appear in similar colors.
- Author - The color chosen for a particular line depends on the author who made the most recent modification to that line. Each author is mapped to a different color.
The info area shows the commit metadata in a compact format for each line and consists of the following columns:
- SHA short SHA of the commit
- Status will display an ‘~‘-mark if the line has been modified (and not added) and/or an ‘M’ if the line has been introduced in a merge commit
- Author the initials or a short name of the author
- Date a compact display of the commit date (e.g. 21d means the commit was added 21 days ago).
- Line number the number of the current line
More detailed information for a specific commit will be displayed in the tooltip, when hovering over the info area. Additionally, if the commit message is truncated in the tooltip, the option to expand the full message is available through a keypress Accelerator (e.g. pressing F1). The hyperlinks can be used to navigate to the specific commit.
History view
The History of current line view displays the ‘history’ of the currently selected line from the Document view. The ‘history’ consists of all detected past and future versions of the line, as it is present in the select View Commit. The position of the currently selected line from the Document view is denoted by pale borders surrounding the corresponding line in the History view.
The detection of a link between a past and a future version of a line depends on the changes which have happened in a commit:
- If a number of contiguous lines have been replaced by exactly the same number of lines within a commit, this change will be detected as modification of the corresponding lines and they will share the same history.
- If a number of contiguous lines has been replaced by larger or smaller number of lines, the detection of matching lines depends on the outcome of the internal compare algorithm.
- For the case where a line has been detected as removed in a commit (instead of replaced by another line, which might be more appropriate), the history contains a leading commit after line has been removed entry to which you can navigate. For the case where a line has been detected as added in a commit (instead of replacing another line, what might be more appropriate), the history contains a trailing commit before line has been added entry to which you can navigate.
Note
For lines having a ‘~‘-mark in the Document view, the History view will always show past commits.