Git Ride

A VS Code extension for working with git history: a Git Log window in the bottom panel of the editor, a sidebar panel with the working tree, stashes and comparisons, and a three-pane conflict resolver.

Features

Ref tree. Local, Remote and Tags, grouped into folders by name (feature/…), favourite branches pinned in their own block at the top of a group, the current branch and how far it has drifted from its upstream. A branch checked out in another worktree carries a worktree icon, with the directory named in its tooltip. Fetch, Expand All and Collapse All sit above the tree.

Commit list. Streamed in pages of 200 records up to a ceiling of 10,000, more loaded as you scroll, draggable author and date columns. A commit graph is drawn inside the rows: hovering lights up a straight stretch of history, and a click hides it behind a dashed line. View options in the list header shows or hides the graph, the author, the short hash and the date; the graph steps aside while a filter narrows the history. Hovering the refs or the subject of a commit shows a card laid out like the header of the details pane: the whole subject with the short hash at the end of its line, the author and the exact date, and every ref in full.

Filters. Ref selection (one branch, several of them, or a from..to range), message search, authors, date (last 24 hours, last week, last month, a custom range) and path. Authors and dates open in pop-ups, and the × next to a filter clears it. A search of four or more hex characters also reads as a hash: every commit whose hash starts with it goes to the top of the list even when nothing else matched. Filters and selection survive a window reload.

Details pane. A header row names the number of changed files next to Expand All, Collapse All, Show as List / Show as Tree and the pane toggle, above the files themselves — a tree of directories or a flat list of full paths; a double click opens the diff in the built-in comparison window. Below the tree: the commit message with its subject in bold and the short hash at the end of its line, with the full hash in its tooltip, then the author with an email and a single date, and a row of badges with the refs of the commit; a branch and its copy on a remote share one badge, such as origin & main. The ref tree and the details pane collapse to a narrow rail and come back at their old width.

History tabs. Show History in the Git Ride submenu of the editor and explorer context menus opens the history of a file or folder as a tab next to Log, built from the current branch; renames are not followed. Show History for Selection does the same for the selected lines and follows them as they move and as the file is renamed. Clicking a commit on a history tab opens the diff of the file at that commit, or updates the one already open.

Actions. The commit context menu — Checkout Revision, New Branch from Here, New Tag, Cherry-Pick, Revert Commit, Undo Commit, Reset Current Branch to Here, Compare with Local, and copying the hash or the message. The ref context menu — Checkout, New Branch from, Compare with Current, Show Diff with Working Tree, Merge, Update, Push, Rename, Delete, and copying the name. An entry that does not apply to the row is not shown; Cherry-Pick and Revert Commit stay visible but greyed out on a merge commit, since git needs to be told which parent to take. Checkout, Update and Delete are greyed out on a branch checked out in another worktree, and when git refuses an action on a branch held by another worktree, the message names that worktree. New Branch from opens pre-filled with the name of the branch or tag it was chosen on (a remote branch without its remote), and New Branch from Here with a branch that points at the commit, if there is one. A name already taken by another branch is flagged as you type. The next step offers Create and Checkout, highlighted, and Create; Enter runs the highlighted one.

Operations that local changes would get in the way of offer to stash them and bring them back afterwards, and an unfinished merge or revert is recognised before the command runs.

Git Ride panel. A sidebar panel with three tabs — Changes, Stash and Compare — under one repository selector, with a switch between a directory tree and a flat list of full paths. Files carry the icons of the active icon theme and are coloured by status. The icon of the panel in the activity bar shows the number of tracked changes; untracked files are not counted. While a merge, cherry-pick, revert or rebase is unfinished, a strip above the tabs says so and offers Abort.

Changes. The working tree with checkboxes, a message box, an Amend toggle, and the Commit and Commit and Push buttons. A checkbox means goes into the commit, not staged: no git command runs when you tick one, and the index is touched once — at the moment you commit. During a merge or a cherry-pick the checkboxes are frozen and the commit takes every change, since git refuses a partial commit there. Untracked files live under Unversioned Files, and Add to VCS or a drag to Changes puts them under version control. Conflicting files live under Merge Conflicts. The row menu offers Show Diff, Jump to Source, Open in System Folder, Rollback…, Copy Path and Delete…. Rollback takes a file, a directory or a whole group back to HEAD, exactly as far as the row shows: a directory under Changes leaves its unversioned files alone. Nothing under Merge Conflicts can be rolled back or deleted.

Stash. Entries expand in place to show their files, with the file count and the branch of each entry. Unstash applies an entry and keeps it, Pop applies and removes it, Drop… removes it. Stash Changes… in the Git Ride submenu of the editor and explorer stashes tracked changes; untracked files stay on disk.

Compare. The difference between the selected ref or commit and the working tree. The target comes from Git Log — Show Diff with Working Tree on a ref, Compare with Local on a commit — or from Compare with Branch or Tag… in the Git Ride submenu of the editor and explorer, which picks a local branch, a remote branch or a tag as a list or as folders. On a folder the tab shows only the files under it; on a file the diff with the local copy opens right away. A double click opens the file in the built-in comparison window.

Conflict resolver. A double click on a file under Merge Conflicts opens the merge editor built into VS Code or, with gitride.conflictEditor set to gitride, the Git Ride resolver: our side on the left, their side on the right, and the result in the middle, seeded with the automatic merge. Each change can be taken into the result or dismissed, all non-conflicting changes can be applied at once, and every step is undone with Ctrl+Z. The panes are highlighted like the editor, and the problems found in the result are underlined, with a count in the header of the middle pane. The result is written to the file and staged.

Console. Every git call is written to the Git Ride output channel: the run number, the whole command line, stderr line by line and the exit code. stdout is not written — that would be megabytes of history.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.130 or newer
• git 2.25 or newer — the Changes tab passes path lists on standard input (--pathspec-from-file), which older versions do not understand
• git on PATH, or the path given by the git.path setting
• the built-in vscode.git extension enabled — workspace repositories are discovered through it, submodules and linked worktrees included

Installation

From the Marketplace: open the Extensions view, search for Git Ride and press Install.

From a .vsix file: open the Extensions view, choose Install from VSIX… in the … menu and pick the file. The same thing from a terminal:

code --install-extension git-ride-0.1.1.vsix

Usage

The Git Log window lives in the bottom panel and the Git Ride panel in the activity bar; both open from the command palette.

Stash Changes…, Show History, Show History for Selection and Compare with Branch or Tag… are in the Git Ride submenu of the editor and explorer context menus.

Settings:

Keys: / moves the focus into the search field, and Escape sends it back to the list without clearing what was typed. Ctrl+C copies the selected commit row or file path, or the text selected with the mouse in the rows of the Commit list. Delete deletes the selected file on the Changes tab and drops the selected entry on the Stash tab. In the resolver, Alt+Up and Alt+Down move between changes.

Privacy

Git Ride works entirely on your machine. It has no telemetry, no accounts and no service of its own to talk to. The only program it runs is git, and the only traffic it can cause is the traffic git itself makes when you fetch or push.

License

Proprietary. The full text ships with the extension as LICENSE.txt and is linked from the License tab of the Marketplace page.