Tips and Tricks
Once you have mastered the basics of using SmartGit to work with git repositories, these handy tips will help you improve productivity within SmartGit. Additionally, please go through our list of How-To articles to get the most out of SmartGit.
Autoscrolling while Drag and Drop
To make a tree or table control scroll automatically while dragging items, be sure to wait a short time over the first or last row of the control. SmartGit will then autoscroll to next page of data.
Feel free to cast your vote to this Eclipse issue to get normal auto-scrolling behavior.
Completion
In input fields for files and directories when typing the file path, you will get completion hints after a (back) slash. On Unix-like systems you can use ~/ to complete content in the home directory.
For the input field to add or edit the path of a Git remote (Remote|Add and Remote|Edit URL) you can use ../ to complete relative paths in case you’ve cloned a repository parallel to another.
To complete file names in the Commit Message input field of the Commit dialog, use <Ctrl>+<Space>-keystroke.
Text Editors
To select words or larger parts of text, you can press <Ctrl>+<W>-keystroke multiple times until you have expanded the selection as desired. To copy or cut the whole line to the clipboard, set the caret inside the line without selecting anything and press the <Ctrl/Cmd>+<C>-keystroke or the <Ctrl/Cmd>+<X>-keystroke.
Compare
To quickly scroll to next and previous changes, position the mouse cursor over the area between both sides (“connector”) and use the scroll wheel.
Speed Search
In tables and tree controls you can quickly find entries by starting to type their name. With the <Up>-keystroke or the <Down>-keystroke you can select the previous or next matching entry, and the <Home>-keystroke and <End>-keystroke go to the first or last matching entry respectively.
Table Columns
For all important tables, you can configure the displayed columns by right-clicking the table header and selecting the desired columns from the context menu.