GitHub Desktop ...?

[nelsonic]

While reviewing a "Mega PR" (tens of thousands of lines of code!)
I realised that I had no way of efficiently reviewing the changes
(I was reviewing in the browser but each time I tried to expand the file to see all the changes it would "hang" in Chrome and Firefox ... because the browser had already loaded a lot of data...)

Additionally I was unable to "load up" several PRs when I had good internet and then view them offline (when no internet is available...) because again, my Web Browser would grind to a halt...!

Decided to try GitHub Desktop to see if it can help: https://desktop.github.com

Obviously it requires "Full Access":

Testing it now...
After authenticating I see this:

Not a very helpful "home screen" for an existing user ... 🙄

[nelsonic]

An example of an "XXL" Open Source PR: dwyl/english-words#35

Sadly when I attempt to view the PR in GitHub desktop I get the following Error:

In other words, for Large Pull Requests with many changes in files, GitHub Desktop is useless. 😞

[nelsonic]

Deleted the app. useless. 😕
Might consider an alternative Git GUI but for now just going to use CLI. 🙄

[MysticMight]

@nelsonic have you tried SourceTree, it is similar to the GitHub Desktop app, though different layout etc. I am not sure if this will fix your issue though, I haven't dealt with large file commits.

I did a bit of research on the file limit and it looks like Git-LFS was designed for large files (https://git-lfs.github.com/) source: desktop/desktop#2213.
By default it can be used with command line but it also looks like it can be used with Github Desktop: https://github.com/blog/2079-managing-large-files-with-git-lfs

Edit: This is perhaps also useful for others that come across this 'issue', though I haven't tested it because I don't deal with large file commits.

[nelsonic]

@MysticMight thanks for sharing your research. 🔍 👍
SourceTree was the original app I/we used for source control ...
Sadly, SourceTree does not display "Large Files" ...
also, I stopped using SourceTree because it requires Admin Access
to everything on my GitHub account:

I want to authorise an app to have access to only a specific subset of my projects and only with the minimum privileges required to get it's "work" done. i.e. push & pull code.
see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege