Line-staging (Interactive Staging)

Line-staging support, a.k.a. interactive staging is one of our most popular Git suggestion tickets. Visual Studio already supports staging files and now we are taking that to the next level by making it possible to stage chunks of changes in your files right from the editor. Line-staging can be helpful when you need to split changes across different commits. Download the latest Preview version of Visual Studio and start staging chunks of changes right from the IDE.

17.2 Preview 1 updates

The following list summarizes the main items we were able to address during this release:

• Color margin support that visualizes Git changes on Editor’s margin and scroll bar
• Peek Difference Editor support with the ability to navigate between differences
• Ability to stage chunks of code directly from the editor
• Addressed a number of issues and limitations

Work is in progress to add the following features:

• Ability to stage specific lines within chunks or sections of changes
• Ability to un-stage lines and chunks of code
• Refresh latency enhancements

Color margin support

The first thing you will probably notice in this feature is that the Editor now visualizes Git changes on both the scroll bar and the margin.

This makes it easy to differentiate between saved and not saved changes that you added, deleted or modified.

Peek Difference Editor support

Color margins are interactive and clicking them triggers the Peek Difference UI where you can view your changes right in the editor without switching context. The Peek Difference UI summarizes the number of added and removed lines and makes it easy to navigate between changes using the up/down arrows.

You can also access Peek Difference by right clicking a line with changes and selecting Peek Difference or by utilizing the Alt+F8 keyboard shortcut.

Stage chunks of code

You can stage any chunk of code using the Peek Difference by hovering over the change you would like to stage and selecting Stage Change. Alternatively, you can use the global Stage button if you would like to stage all the changes you made to a document.

To get a full screen Difference experience, you can choose to switch to the Difference editor by clicking the Promote to Document option on the top right corner of the Peek Difference or by using the Ctrl+Alt+Home keyboard shortcut. All the features that the Peek Difference provides are also available on the Difference Editor.

Commit staged changes

Once you finish preparing for your commit by reviewing and staging the changes you would like to include, you can create your commit using the Git Changes window by providing a commit message and clicking Commit Staged.

Let us know what you think

We have benefitted greatly from all the rich feedback we’ve received from you – thank you! We hope you’ll help us continue to improve by giving the new Line-staging support a try and letting us know what you think by taking the following quick survey: