Use revision control annotation in your editor

I was discussing comments vs. intention-revealing code with some folks on Twitter today and I realize that there’s a tool I take so much for granted I don’t even think about it any more. The tool is called VC-Annotate in Emacs, but some form of it should exist in every decent editor.

If you’re a programmer and you’re not using your editor’s revision control annotation features, I strongly recommend learning about them ASAP. They are an essential tool in understanding the story behind the code.

httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=rjnm-suxfRI

15 comments

  1. Thanks for the tip Avdi – really powerful.

    Does anyone know of similar functionality in vim? Closest I could find was VCSCommand1 however I’m not sure it goes as far as Avdi does here.

      1. Yeah.. Tim Pope’s Fugitive does exactly that. Just type :Gblame in normal mode and you’ll see the exact thing what Avdi is showing here. You can open each commit shown in that view by pressing ‘o’.

  2. Just came across this. Never realised how much under-used VC is in my workflows. I’ll have to see if this works with Perforce as well. Thanks for the tip.

    BTW, what’s the colour scheme you’re using in there ?

        1. There is actually very little overlap between the two. Magit is for managing a whole project under revision control. It’s what I use when I’m selecting files/hunks for a commit, for instance. Or pushing, pulling, rebasing—anything that takes effect project-wide.

          vc-mode, OTOH, is totally buffer/file-focused. It won’t show you the state of your whole project, but it will tell you quite a bit about the file you are currently looking at.

          In short: they are complementary!

  3. Absolutely amazing! Avdi, you made my day! Thank you very much! Now I love emacs far more! Emacs rocks!

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