History

Byte can keep a Git history for each snippet: every save from the workspace records a commit, and the workspace’s History view shows what each commit changed and restores an earlier version.

Turning it on

History is off by default. Turn it on with a filter, in a must-use plugin or your theme’s functions.php:

add_filter('sleekByte/snippets/git', '__return_true');

While it is off, the History view stays empty, saving records nothing, and Actions_gitRead and Actions_gitWrite answer 409.

How it records

Git runs in the browser, in IndexedDB. When a save touches a snippet, the workspace commits that snippet’s files and writes the snippet’s .git directory back into its folder on the server through Actions_gitWrite. The first commit of a snippet’s history is an “Initial snapshot” of the snippet as it was saved before; every save after it is one commit, whose message is Save at and the time in ISO form, the same in every language.

The repository on the server is an ordinary one, so standard Git tools read it:

cd wp-content/uploads/sleek-byte/my-snippet
git log --oneline

Another browser, or the same one after its data was cleared, loads the server’s .git directory through Actions_gitRead the first time it uses a snippet’s history after the page loads. Only saves from the workspace commit: files written through WP-CLI or by other means appear in the next commit the workspace records. .git folders never appear in the file tree, and Byte does not write them as snippet files.

Viewing and restoring

History, beside Snippets at the top of the file tree, switches the tree to the history of the snippet the open file belongs to. It lists the commits, newest first, with their time; a save reads “Saved changes” there, in your language. It follows the open file to another snippet; a save adds its commit at once. Snippets switches back to the files.

Choosing a commit opens it as a read-only tab beside the open files, named after the commit. The tab shows the files the commit changed, each with its added and removed line counts and its diff against the commit before it, not against today’s files. Other tabs bring the files back; the commit’s tab stays open until you close it.

Restore this version, in the commit tab’s toolbar, puts that commit’s files into the editor as unsaved changes and closes the tab: files that differ become changed, files the commit did not have become deletions. Save to keep them, which records a new commit, or discard.

Actions_gitCheck reports whether history is on and which snippets hold a .git directory; it looks only at the top-level folders of each source, so a snippet in a nested folder is not listed there, although its history works.