The working copy

The working copy is everything that is different between the files on your disk and your last commit. Innesta lists it as soon as you open a repository, and keeps the list current while you work — editing a file in another application updates it within a moment, with no refresh.

The states a file can be in

Innesta distinguishes added, modified, removed, renamed, copied, untracked and conflicted files, and marks each row with which it is. Two of those come up constantly:

• Modified — the file is tracked and you have changed it.
• Untracked — the file exists but Git has never seen it, so nothing is recorded about it and there is no “before” to compare against. Grouped by status, the list keeps these apart under Unversioned Files, below Changes; the headings appear only when there is something in both.

Whether a change is staged — whether you have told Git it belongs in the next commit — is a separate question, and it has a mark of its own at the other end of the row. A file is modified and staged, not one or the other, and if you have edited it again since staging it, part of it is staged and part is not. Both marks are keyed in Colours and symbols.

That mixture is common and easy to misread, so Innesta gives those files an All / Unstaged / Staged selector. It is rendered against HEAD, which means a change keeps its position in the diff while you switch between the three views instead of jumping about as the comparison changes.

Listing by status or by folder

The list starts as a folder tree, and can be flat instead — grouped by what happened to each file. View ▸ Working Copy Files ▸ Folder Hierarchy and View ▸ Working Copy Files ▸ Grouped by Status switch between them, as does the layout menu above the list, and the choice holds for every repository.

The folder tree earns its place on a large change: each folder shows how many files under it have changed, and the whole folder can be staged, unstaged, stashed or discarded in one action.

Finding a change

⇧⌘F searches the contents of changed files; ⇧⌘O finds one by its name or path. Both open the Working Copy search panel, where you can preview a result and jump to its diff.

Refreshing

Innesta watches the repository and refreshes itself. Watching pauses while the window is inactive, hidden, minimised or covered, and resumes with a single refresh when you come back — so a repository that changed a great deal while you were elsewhere costs one update rather than hundreds.

Repository ▸ Refresh (⌘R) forces one, which is occasionally useful after something outside the app has rewritten history.