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@Byron Byron commented Oct 18, 2025

Get a minimal viable version of unapply() that only deals with the common case we can handle today, or simple cases that are new.

Follow-up of #10698.

Fixes

  • ⚠️ tips could be conflicted, deal with it when merging
  • investigate 'base' related behaviour for more intuitive results when applying into an empty branch.

Tasks

  • unapply: make sure to also delete metadata, even if the branch isn't actually in the workspace.

Next PR?

  • cherry-pick index as well (but only conflicts) - consider skipping but make sure it doesn't get lost

Future Tasks

  • make archived more sturdy in the light of applying/unapplying, to consider keeping the original copy of the now integrated part of the stack.
  • proper worktree handling - we must not checkout branches that are already checked out in worktree (see gix code somewhere)
  • Permutations: starting point
    • test unborn
    • starting point without WS ref
    • starting point with WS ref but not WS-commit or metadata
    • starting point with WS ref and WS commit
  • Permutations: base position
    • base below
    • base above
  • Validate StackID handling in VB.toml adapter (assure it can keep unapplied branches correctly)
    • We need all the tests so at a later point we can possibly localise the stack-id and keep it with each branch instead.
  • without single-branch mode, it's possible to have a workspace with just one stack, or even no stacks at all.
  • unapply: must take care of assignments (see research)
  • don't apply the target branch!
  • try to fix but-graph issue

Shortcomings

  • Worktree change in a detached HEAD can't be stashed as there is no reference to associated the stash with.
    • But that's OK as we don't currently store stashes anyway for a lack of UI support to try to apply them.

Notes

General Rules

  • The workspace is a conflict-free zone
    • nothing that operates on the conflict must write conflicts into the index.
      This is as conflicts are currently hidden from view.
  • Symmetry
    • If apply is doing something, then unapply undoes exactly that, or in other words State + apply + unapply == State
  • There is no single-branch workspace when starting in single-branch mode
    • A workspace consists of at least two branches and a workspace commit
    • The workspace commit is optional if there is only one commit involved, i.e. when it's just a bunch of branches on top of a single commit
  • Workspace Commit ALWAYS for even for a single branch
    • The workspace backend can deal with anything, but commit() currently can't.
    • Have to add commit() and uncommit() as well to all apply-unapply tests so these can later be re-tested with different behaviour.
    • Implied by the previous rule

Follow-Ups

  • commit with auto-workspace-commit creation
    • At the same time, it needs uncommit() that is symmetric

Thus:

  • snapshots of worktree changes will be made to apply by forcing merge-conflicts to be... auto-resolved.
    This is a problem, but we can't have conflicts as the UI doesn't show them right now, nor does it allow interacting with them.

Unapply

  • Conflicting paths are passed added as extra commit at first, without additional special handling in apply just to be able to handle them.
    • This means assignments aren't taken care of in all cases (but we will see how all this interacts with stack-ids)

Research

Unapply: Assignments - with stashing

  • uncommitted but assigned changes should create a snapshot commit
  • when applying the same branch this snapshot is applied

However, the user should be able to interact with these.

Unapply: Assignments - with WIP commit

  • uncommitted but assigned changes should create a WIP commit
    • or just unassign these assignments and they are back in the unassigned changes of the workspace
  • MVP apply: do nothing with the WIP commit
  • final version: apply restores the assignments from the WIP commit (which then is tracked with metadata)

Unapply with worktree changes

  • worktree changes that don't re-apply cleanly

Possible Follow-Ups

  • Find a way to display and handle conflicts in the UI (Gitizen).
    • this would allow us to write conflicts as well and deal with them.

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vercel bot commented Oct 18, 2025

@Byron is attempting to deploy a commit to the GitButler Team on Vercel.

A member of the Team first needs to authorize it.

…ing.

That way, applying branches would be more intuitive if they are far away
from the current workspace base.
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