How to reply to a top-level comment?

[ktfleming]

I'm having some trouble replying to a top-level comment on a PR (like this one). It seems like no matter where point is (on the line labeled "Conversation", on the line that includes the Github user name and the timestamp, or on the comment itself), calling code-review-comment-add-or-edit just gives the error You can't add text over unspecified region. I think that's the correct command that should let me reply to a comment, right? Maybe there's something I'm missing or doing wrong...I'm not sure if this is a bug or just my mistake, so I'm trying a discussion instead of an issue, at least to start.

[ktfleming]

Ah wait, right after I posted this I just realized that maybe it's not really a "reply" that I want to do as it seems that top-level comments can't have direct replies. What I wanted to do was the equivalent of scrolling to the bottom of the main PR page, typing a comment into the text area, and hitting the "Comment" button. Does code-review support this? I suppose I could re-review the PR and add a comment at the same time, but really I just would like to add a comment by itself.

[ktfleming]

I think the first approach sounds good! When you say you updated upstream, do you mean that you already added this feature in? I pulled the latest version and looked around, but I couldn't see a way to add a single comment yet...just as an example, I wrote a test comment (from Github) that shows what I'm trying to achieve: https://github.com/ktfleming/code-review-bug/pull/1#issuecomment-983110988

[ktfleming]

Oh wait! Sorry, I think this whole thing was my misunderstanding...it seems like I can get what I want by simply adding feedback and then choosing "comment" from the transient menu.

[wandersoncferreira]

Oh wait! Sorry, I think this whole thing was my misunderstanding...it seems like I can get what I want by simply adding feedback and then choosing "comment" from the transient menu.

I thought this too... but there is a difference in meaning to Github on these comments. If you add a feedback and send a Comment review it will be assigned by GitHub as a "PullRequestReview" type and if you only add a single comment it will be assigned as "IssueComment".

This distinction is used here

code-review/code-review-github.el

Line 629 in a1e01be

("PullRequestReview" "pullrequestreview-")))

to create correct links if you desire to promote a comment to a new issue.

[wandersoncferreira]

if you are interested in developing this feature I can provide some guidance around the codebase... it is not hard/difficult but unfortunately is not an isolated change as I would like it to be.

let me know.

[ktfleming]

I see! Thanks for the explanation. I think for now the way of commenting that I described above should work for my purposes!

I suppose I'll mark this thread as an answer then.