add command to preview a PR

[fiji-flo]

yarn tool view-pr https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/76
yarn run v1.22.10
$ node tool/cli.js view-pr https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/76
preview MDN/Kitchensink → http://localhost:5000/en-us/docs/MDN/Kitchensink
✔ checked out PR: https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/76
Don't for get to run git checkout main when done!

Can be improved but maybe something to start with and to get some feedback @chrisdavidmills

[peterbe]

I am not convinced about this. I'd rather go back to the drawing board a bit more first.

First of all, my biggest fear is that we're taking on too much and too much can go wrong.
It is after all a very niched abstraction. You've assumed that it's always about checking out from mdn/content and that alone misses that someone might want to check out myfriendsfork/content.
All in all, I'm scared that we're taking on the task of teaching people the basics of git and we're also taking on other git related tools.

Also, this is quite a big change that edits a lot of code which can break things and it's a "distraction" towards the Yari1 blockers which we need to focus on first.

In general, I'd like to start from the absolute minimum and work our way up slowly.
It could just start with a blurb in the README, like "How to check out someones PR locally" and we explain how you do it (without using merge I hope!). And if that's not enough, we can write a gist script that you can download on the side.

Lastly, if we do anything to hold people's hands with using git I think I'd rather build it without a UI first and then discuss and consider using Web or CLI once things mature.

[peterbe]

Suggested change

	throw new Error(`unable to determine upstream: ${e}`);
	throw new Error(`unable to determine upstream: ${e.toString()}`);

[Ryuno-Ki]

Alternatively ${e.message}?

[peterbe]

There's a lot of great potential in here. If done correctly, we can write some routines that can be accessed via a CLI or even via the "Writer's Homepage", similar to the list of recently viewed docs. Imagine if the Writer's home page could have a searchable drop-down of all open PRs and you just click the one you want and Yari can automatically execute the necessary checkout commands and voila, you have a anybody's PR on your localhost:5000 without having to type anything.

Are you interested in refreshing this? In particular, we'd need to make it work for mdn/content and mdn/translated-content and we ought to make the CLI as thin as possible.

[schalkneethling]

@fiji-flo I wonder if we could instead recommend the GitHub CLI to people? https://cli.github.com/ - It is available for all platforms(https://github.com/cli/cli#installation) and has a number of super useful tools such as checking out a PR locally(gh pr checkout 1677), etc.

[fiji-flo]

I do have mixed feelings regarding the github cli. I'd add something to the README like this:

Assuming you have run this once:

git remote add upstream "https://github.com/mdn/yari.git"

You can run:

git fetch upstream pull/<PR_ID>/head:pr<PR_ID>
git checkout <PR_ID>

Or use the github cli.

[schalkneethling]

I do have mixed feelings regarding the github cli. I'd add something to the README like this:

Assuming you have run this once:

git remote add upstream "https://github.com/mdn/yari.git"

You can run:

git fetch upstream pull/<PR_ID>/head:pr<PR_ID>
git checkout <PR_ID>

Or use the github cli.

I can add some docs for that.

[schalkneethling]

Closing in favour of #5202