Filter file views rather than search

[jesseduffield]

PR Description

Way back when I implemented filter functionality I could not muster the motivation to apply it to the file views (files and commit files), but it really should be used on them.

The text filter matches against the full file path (not just the filename), which is more useful for navigating large directory trees.

When a text filter is active, all operations respect it consistently:

• Diffs: selecting a filtered directory shows only the diff of visible files, not all files in the directory
• Staging/unstaging: pressing space on a filtered directory only stages/unstages visible files
• Toggle all (a): only toggles staging for visible files
• Custom patch: toggling a filtered directory only adds visible files to the patch

Full disclosure, opus 4.6 wrote this entire PR but reviewing its changes they seem reasonable, and I have done some local testing and everything works as expected.

Please check if the PR fulfills these requirements

• Cheatsheets are up-to-date (run go generate ./...)
• Code has been formatted (see here)
• Tests have been added/updated (see here for the integration test guide)
• Text is internationalised (see here)
• If a new UserConfig entry was added, make sure it can be hot-reloaded (see here)
• Docs have been updated if necessary
• You've read through your own file changes for silly mistakes etc

[codacy-production]

Coverage summary from Codacy

See diff coverage on Codacy

Coverage variation	Diff coverage
Report missing for 1d0db511	✅ 90.63%

Coverage variation details

	Coverable lines	Covered lines	Coverage
Common ancestor commit (1d0db51)	Report Missing	Report Missing	Report Missing
Head commit (5586a87)	59977	52450	87.45%

Coverage variation is the difference between the coverage for the head and common ancestor commits of the pull request branch: <coverage of head commit> - <coverage of common ancestor commit>

Diff coverage details

	Coverable lines	Covered lines	Diff coverage
Pull request (#5273)	427	387	90.63%

Diff coverage is the percentage of lines that are covered by tests out of the coverable lines that the pull request added or modified: <covered lines added or modified>/<coverable lines added or modified> * 100%

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Footnotes

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[jesseduffield]

Renamed to GetStatusFilter to avoid the naming collision with GetFilter which comes from the IFilterableContext interface.

[stefanhaller]

It would be nice to extract this to a separate preparation commit, with a commit message explaining the reason, so that you don't have to explain it here. 😄

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR updates Lazygit’s file-based panels (working tree files and commit files) to use the existing filter mechanism (i.e., actually reducing the list contents) instead of the search mechanism (highlighting matches without changing the list).

Changes:

• Add text-filter support to working-tree and commit-file trees, including fuzzy/non-fuzzy matching.
• Convert Working Tree Files and Commit Files contexts from “searchable” to “filterable”.
• Enable and adjust integration tests that validate file/commit-file filtering behavior.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 15 out of 15 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
pkg/integration/tests/filter_and_search/nested_filter_transient.go	Updates expectations to reflect filtering behavior in transient panels.
pkg/integration/tests/filter_and_search/nested_filter.go	Updates expectations/comments for filtering behavior across nested panels.
pkg/integration/tests/filter_and_search/filter_files.go	Unskips and runs file filtering integration test now that filtering is implemented.
pkg/integration/tests/filter_and_search/filter_commit_files.go	Unskips and runs commit-file filtering integration test now that filtering is implemented.
pkg/gui/filetree/file_tree_view_model.go	Adds IFilterableContext methods + search history to working tree file view model.
pkg/gui/filetree/file_tree.go	Implements text filtering for working-tree files and renames status filter getter.
pkg/gui/filetree/file_filter.go	Adds shared text-filter helpers for files and commit files (substring or fuzzy).
pkg/gui/filetree/commit_file_tree_view_model.go	Adds IFilterableContext methods + search history to commit-file view model.
pkg/gui/filetree/commit_file_tree.go	Implements text filtering in commit-file tree building.
pkg/gui/controllers/switch_to_diff_files_controller.go	Clears commit-files filtering when switching into diff-files view.
pkg/gui/controllers/helpers/search_helper.go	Resets filter history index on open; adjusts when selection resets on re-apply.
pkg/gui/controllers/helpers/refresh_helper.go	Updates call sites for renamed status filter getter.
pkg/gui/controllers/files_controller.go	Updates status filter references to new getter name.
pkg/gui/context/working_tree_context.go	Converts working tree context from searchable to filterable.
pkg/gui/context/commit_files_context.go	Converts commit files context from searchable to filterable.

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[mdsiaofficial]

after staging?

[stefanhaller]

Nice!

From what I remember, the main reason why we excluded the Files view from filtering back then was that we couldn't decide whether it should filter just the file name, or the full path. I can't find any discussion about that any more though. In this PR it seems you have decided to filter by full path, and it may well be the more desirable behavior (I'm still not really sure though). I would have expected some mention of this in the PR description or commit message.

One inconsistency that I found: if you filter in the Commit Files view so that only some files in a directory are visible, and then select the directory and press space, only the visible files are added to the custom patch. However, if you do the same in the Files panel, all files are staged, even the invisible ones. I'm not really sure which behavior is the more expected one, but I feel it would be good to be consistent.

And finally, after using it for a day I found a very confusing aspect of this, related to the previous parapraph: if you filter a directory so that only one file is visible, and then select the directory, it shows the diff of all files in it. This is of course the expected behavior if you think about it, but if you don't, it can confuse the hell out of you. (It did for me, anyway, and I suspect it could confuse other users.) I don't have any idea what we could do about it (probably nothing), just wanted to bring it up as something that confused me.

[jesseduffield]

From what I remember, the main reason why we excluded the Files view from filtering back then was that we couldn't decide whether it should filter just the file name, or the full path. I can't find any discussion about that any more though. In this PR it seems you have decided to filter by full path, and it may well be the more desirable behavior (I'm still not really sure though). I would have expected some mention of this in the PR description or commit message.

I had forgotten there was discussion about that: this time around doing the full path feels like a no-brainer: in rust you can often have a bunch of files with the same name mod.rs and so for those you'd want to be filtering based on their directory.

One inconsistency that I found: if you filter in the Commit Files view so that only some files in a directory are visible, and then select the directory and press space, only the visible files are added to the custom patch. However, if you do the same in the Files panel, all files are staged, even the invisible ones. I'm not really sure which behavior is the more expected one, but I feel it would be good to be consistent.

Good catch. I think it's less surprising if we only stage things which are visible. It also supports more use cases like only wanting to stage all .go files in a project (filter by .go, then stage all). I've pushed a commit which does this.

And finally, after using it for a day I found a very confusing aspect of this, related to the previous parapraph: if you filter a directory so that only one file is visible, and then select the directory, it shows the diff of all files in it. This is of course the expected behavior if you think about it, but if you don't, it can confuse the hell out of you. (It did for me, anyway, and I suspect it could confuse other users.) I don't have any idea what we could do about it (probably nothing), just wanted to bring it up as something that confused me.

I've resolved this in the last commit.