Inline commit notes

In Ryan’s Compare View post we promised that we’d be rolling out more code review features and today we’re rolling out the latest: inline commit comments notes.

Comments → Notes

GitHub has actually had commit and line-based commit comments for a very long time. The problem was they were tucked into a facebox activated by a little bubble peeking out of the side of the source. Hard to find.

Now, we’ve moved the comments inline and we’re calling them notes. This terminology helps distinguish commit notes from comments on issues and other places.

As a side-note, we’ve also deprecated file-based commit notes (that is notes that are attributed to a file, but not a line). Old comments will continue to show up indefinitely, but you will no longer be able to add them.

Highlighting important people

The new note styles also help to highlight people who you might want to listen to — notably repository owners & collaborators.

Publish notes like a pro-fessional

Previously with the old commit comments only repository collaborators could delete comments (and no one could edit them). Now you can edit and delete your own notes (in addition to repository collabs).

Another source of pain was the fact that you could only preview your comment under specific conditions. Now you’ll see that everywhere you can make a note, there’s a handy little preview tab that will give you a live preview.