Support opening multiple repositories at once

[siegenthalerroger]

It would be great to be able to have multiple repositories opened in parallel (akin to the "workspaces" in vscode and intelliJ).

For example in my case I have multiple git repositories for different parts of our as-code deployment configurations (depending on what other people require access). I regularly have changes that are similar across all repositories and create an identical structure of stacked branches in each repo (e.g. maintenance/2024-12-). It would be really cool if we could have these stacked virtual branches shown as one group despite being multiple different repos in the background.

[Byron]

Thanks a lot for sharing!

Even though I would find it unlikely that GitButler could be changed to be able to support this, an alternative to that could be the ability to recreate a certain stack, along with its patches, in another repository using a (future) CLI maybe, or by exporting a file that can be imported into other repositories with the UI even.

That way it would be possible to achieve something similar with multiple Windows open. Please do let me know if I am missing a key point which wouldn't be covered by the approach I mentioned.
Thanks again.

[Rots]

Regardless of the fancy multi-repo approach described above I would appreciate if I could just open multiple independent instances (gitbutler windows) on different repositories. Currently it doesn't seem to be possible (only with the separate nightly installation, but then again limited to those two windows and it doesn't scale).

[Caleb-T-Owens]

@Byron wasn't part of the repo lock you added intended for supporting multiple gitbutler windows?

[Byron]

GitButler has a hidden feature that allows to have multiple Windows open, one per repository. Just Alt + Click them in the Project selector on the left. Would that be what you had in mind, @Rots ?

[Rots]

Yes, this is exactly what I would like! Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be currently functional. Alt+Click does indeed open a new window, but it's just white blank contents with the menu bar (which is generally responsive, I can open documentation and choose to Exit - that closes both windows). "Reload View" doesn't seem to be doing anything. The window cannot be closed from the X. After closing the original window, the blank window becomes unresponsive. Using v0.14.4 on Windows

[Byron]

Thanks a lot for reporting, and sorry for the disappointment :/. I mostly test on MacOS and there it worked and still works.

I can also reproduce the problem on Windows.
Interestingly, a couple of menu items in the new window frame affect the Window it was spawned from.

Further, when choosing "Exit" from the menu in the child Window while looking at the logs (and there are no logs in the console), I got this:

2025-01-12T15:25:03.225006Z  INFO list_projects: crates\gitbutler-tauri\src\projects.rs:46: close time.busy=165µs time.idle=36.0µs
2025-01-12T15:25:04.465260Z  INFO open_project_in_window: crates\gitbutler-tauri\src\window.rs:208: creating window '1736695504465' created at 'd07c9948-daa7-4452-b125-c5529b890289/board' id=d07c9948-daa7-4452-b125-c5529b890289
[C:\Users\runneradmin\.cargo\registry\src\index.crates.io-6f17d22bba15001f\tauri-runtime-wry-2.1.2\src/lib.rs:4272:46] e = WebView2Error(
    TaskCanceled,
)
[2025-01-12][15:26:10][tauri_runtime_wry][ERROR] failed to create webview: WebView2 error: TaskCanceled
2025-01-12T15:26:10.032078Z  INFO open_project_in_window: crates\gitbutler-tauri\src\projects.rs:83: close time.busy=65.6s time.idle=120µs id=d07c9948-daa7-4452-b125-c5529b890289
thread 'main' panicked at C:\Users\runneradmin\.cargo\registry\src\index.crates.io-6f17d22bba15001f\webview2-com-0.33.0\src\callback.rs:114:1:
send over mpsc channel: SendError { .. }
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace
thread 'main' panicked at library\core\src\panicking.rs:221:5:
panic in a function that cannot unwind
stack backtrace:
   0:     0x7ff74e6e96b6 - git_odb_object_data
   1:     0x7ff74dfb1799 - git_odb_object_data
   2:     0x7ff74e6c7f67 - git_odb_object_data
   3:     0x7ff74e6ed997 - git_odb_object_data
   4:     0x7ff74e6ee959 - git_odb_object_data
   5:     0x7ff74e6ee37f - git_odb_object_data
   6:     0x7ff74e6ee30f - git_odb_object_data
   7:     0x7ff74e6ee2f6 - git_odb_object_data
   8:     0x7ff74ea281b3 - git_midx_writer_new
   9:     0x7ff74ea28235 - git_midx_writer_new
  10:     0x7ff74ea281ef - git_midx_writer_new
  11:     0x7ff74e86d52c - git_odb_object_size
  12:     0x7ff74ea1fef0 - git_midx_writer_new
  13:     0x7ff74ea1ec18 - git_midx_writer_new
  14:     0x7ffa39f5323c - ZwWaitLowEventPair
  15:     0x7ffa39e152ec - ZwWaitLowEventPair
  16:     0x7ff74e86d4d4 - git_odb_object_size
  17:     0x7ff9dcaac7da - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  18:     0x7ff9dcaa7595 - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  19:     0x7ff9dcaac61f - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  20:     0x7ff9dcab55fc - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  21:     0x7ff9dcabb682 - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  22:     0x7ff9dca8eedf - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  23:     0x7ff9dca882cb - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  24:     0x7ff9dca8777c - CreateWebViewEnvironmentWithOptionsInternal
  25:     0x7ff9dcc63891 - DllCanUnloadNow
  26:     0x7ff9dcc6395b - DllCanUnloadNow
[..]

It looks like it hangs because the webview never finishes its creation. Probably a deadlock, with the new window failing to communicate 'something' and the parent window waiting forever to be able to conclude the window creation.