hunk-commit-log

Review a branch one commit at a time in Hunk: the commit series in a pane beside the diff, the commit message above it, and keys to step between commits without leaving the window.

Hunk builds a revision review with git show --format=, which suppresses the commit header, so a hunk show review says what changed and never what its author said about it. This extension puts the commit back into the review.

Requires Hunk 0.19.0 or newer (extension API 6) and git on PATH.

A review in progress, reading this extension's own history: the commit series in the left pane, the message above the diff, and n stepping between commits.

demo-native-crf22.mp4

What it adds

• The reviewed commit in the review title: hunk-commit-log 3/11 e0ced7b feat(session): load a clicked commit into the live review. The position also reaches hunk session list, so a window says which commit it holds.
• A commit list on the left, oldest at the top, the reviewed commit marked with ▸. Click any row to load that commit into the same window.
• The commit message on top: subject, author, date, and the body wrapped to the pane. A body taller than the pane reports how many lines it held back.
• The message toned by what each part is: the sha recedes, a Conventional Commits type leads, prose reads in the foreground, identifiers in backticks are picked out, and trailers and indented blocks recede. The tones name theme roles rather than colours, so they follow whatever theme is active.
• n and p to step to the next and previous commit in the series.

Every surface is inert outside a single-commit review: during hunk diff, a stash review, or a patch review the panes stay closed, the keys do nothing, and the review title is Hunk's own.

Install

Try it against one review, with nothing installed:

hunk show HEAD --extension /path/to/hunk-commit-log

Keep it, by naming the folder in ~/.config/hunk/config.toml:

[extensions]
paths = ["/path/to/hunk-commit-log"]

Or install it from a git repository, which clones into ~/.config/hunk/extensions/installed/<repo-name>/:

hunk extension install <owner>/hunk-commit-log

Keep the repository named hunk-commit-log. The folder name becomes the extension id, and the id is what namespaces the command ids, the pane keys, and the config table below; a different name silently renames all of them.

Configuration

[extension.hunk-commit-log]
range = "main..HEAD"   # the series to review; default: your unpushed commits
limit = 20             # most commits to gather when no range is set; max 500
messageRows = 8        # rows the message pane starts with; 3 to 60

range is any revision range git rev-list accepts. With a range set, the series is exactly that range, which is usually what a reviewer means by "this branch".

Without a range, the series is @{upstream}..HEAD: the commits your branch has added on top of what it has pushed, newest limit of them. That is the work you are reviewing on a branch you are still building, and because the range ends at the branch tip rather than at the commit you opened, n has somewhere to go from anywhere inside it.

When there is no such work, the series is the limit commits ending at the commit you opened. That is what you get on a branch in sync with its upstream, on a branch with no upstream at all, on a detached HEAD, and whenever you open a commit that has already been pushed — the reviewed commit is not among the unpushed ones, so the series has to come from somewhere that holds it. This fallback is the old default, and it starts the review at the newest end of the series where only p can move.

A configured range that does not contain the reviewed commit is not an error either: it falls the same way, straight past the unpushed commits to recent history. The extension records why through hunk.log, which Hunk 0.19.0 collects but does not appear to display anywhere, so in practice the fallback is unobservable: if the position looks like plain recent history rather than your branch, the range is the thing to check. The unpushed default never logs, because nothing was asked for that it failed to honour.

messageRows is the height the message pane opens at. Drag its lower edge to resize it in a session; Hunk keeps that size in session state and forgets it on quit, so this is where a taller default belongs if your commits carry long bodies. The default is deliberately small: a one-line commit should not cost the diff eight rows.

A range that begins with - is ignored. A repository's own .hunk/config.toml may set this table, and the value reaches a git rev-list argument list where a leading dash reads as an option.

Keys

Key	Command id	Does
n	hunk-commit-log.next	Next commit in the series
p	hunk-commit-log.previous	Previous commit in the series
h	hunk-commit-log.toggle	Show or hide the commit list
i	hunk-commit-log.message	Show or hide the commit message
I	hunk-commit-log.expand	Fit the pane to the message, or collapse it

Remap them by command id in the [keybindings] table of your user config, which is the only place Hunk reads keybindings from:

[keybindings]
"hunk-commit-log.next" = "ctrl+n"
"hunk-commit-log.previous" = false   # unbind

] and [ would read better than n and p, and they are already hunk.review.nextHunk and hunk.review.previousHunk. A built-in keeps a chord an extension asks for, so those requests would be refused and the keys would do nothing new.

Stepping does not wrap at either end, and a burst of steps loads the commit you stopped on rather than every commit you passed through.

How it works

• The reviewed ref comes out of the review title. No extension API reports it, and Hunk's git backend titles a revision review <repo> show <ref>. A title that does not match that shape is a review this extension leaves alone.
• The series is held, not recomputed. Stepping keeps the series it started with and moves the position; only opening a commit outside it rebuilds it. Recomputing from each newly loaded commit would report N/N at every stop.
• Loading a commit goes through the session daemon. The extension API can navigate inside a loaded changeset but cannot load a different one, so a click or a step runs hunk session reload <id> -- show <sha> against this window, found by its own process id rather than by --repo, which would settle for any window open on the same checkout.

Limits

• The commit list is a side pane, and Hunk drops a side pane that would squeeze the diff below its own minimum width. On a terminal too narrow for both, the review keeps its width and the list disappears until the window is wider. It comes back on its own; the pane stays open, it is only unrendered.
• The message pane has no scrolling of its own, because a pane never receives key events. I grows it to fit the message instead. Dragging the lower edge and messageRows set the collapsed height.
• Expanding is a swap between panes of a few fixed heights (8, 12, 18, 26, 36 and 50 rows), because a pane's height is fixed when it is registered and no API resizes it afterwards. I opens the smallest one the message fits in, so the fit is exact to within a few rows rather than to the row. A message past fifty rows, or past what the terminal has once the diff keeps five, still shows its opening and reports the rest as a count.
• Only Git, and it cannot tell that it is not. Hunk's Jujutsu and Sapling backends title a revision review <repo> show <rev> exactly as the Git one does, so in a colocated repository this extension would match the title and then read the series with git rev-list for a revset Git happens to understand: @ means the working-copy commit to jj and HEAD to Git. Use it in Git repositories. Where Git cannot resolve the revision at all, the extension stays inert, which is the harmless half of the same behaviour.

Development

npm install         # devDependencies only
npm run typecheck   # tsc --noEmit
npm test            # node --test, no test framework

Hunk loads the TypeScript directly, so there is no build step. React and the OpenTUI packages stay in devDependencies on purpose: Hunk serves its own copies to extension files, and a second React means a second hooks dispatcher and a pane that never renders.

The tests run against injected fakes for git and for the Hunk CLI, so they never touch a repository or a live window.