Created attachment 124836 [details]
Screenshot showing the position of the future action

Created attachment 127900 [details]
Proposed patch

I like to propose a patch to solve this issue. 
It adds a simple action which copies the current commit message of the line to the clipboard.

Please review, discuss and commit. Thank you. markiewb

i think a much better solution would be to implement the same popup window for a right-click as in mercurial, subversion or git (ToolTipWindow.java). Then user could choose to copy message, username, date or anything else present to the clipboard. No offense but i don't think action "Copy message to clipboard" as a valid single action visible in a popup menu. What if i wanted to copy the username, should we add another action?
Are you willing to implement the ToolTipWinow? I believe you already know how it works since already fixed something in there, right?

Created attachment 127962 [details]
Patch with tooltip window

(In reply to comment #3)
> i think a much better solution would be to implement the same popup window for
> a right-click as in mercurial, subversion or git (ToolTipWindow.java). Then
> user could choose to copy message, username, date or anything else present to
> the clipboard. No offense but i don't think action "Copy message to clipboard"
> as a valid single action visible in a popup menu. What if i wanted to copy the
> username, should we add another action?
> Are you willing to implement the ToolTipWinow? I believe you already know how
> it works since already fixed something in there, right?

Valid arguments. I ported the TooltipWindow from the git module to the cvs module. See patch. But i had to remove all the hyperlinking stuff.

Please have a look.

Created attachment 127963 [details]
Patch with tooltip window - sanatized

OV1: use StringBuilder instead of StringBuffer in getCommitMessage()
OV2: You pass commitMessage as a parameter to ToolTipWindow in the same format as it's display in the tooltip over a line annotation. That means all "\n" are replaced with "<br>" and the tooltip window displays the commit message incorrectly. Pass just al.getMessage() and do not escape anything in the message.

Created attachment 128078 [details]
Patch with tooltip window - sanatized - with StringBuilder

(In reply to comment #6)
> OV1: use StringBuilder instead of StringBuffer in getCommitMessage()
Done - see new patch

> OV2: You pass commitMessage as a parameter to ToolTipWindow in the same format
> as it's display in the tooltip over a line annotation. That means all "\n" are
> replaced with "<br>" and the tooltip window displays the commit message
> incorrectly. Pass just al.getMessage() and do not escape anything in the
> message.

Thanks for the suggestion, BUT sorry this is not possible. The org.netbeans.lib.cvsclient.command.annotate.AnnotateLine does not provide getMessage(). That was the reason i had to pass-through the commit message from AnnotationBar to ToolTipWindow to ToolTipContentPanel. The impl for Hg/Git... provide such a method, but the CVS-code is much older.

> Thanks for the suggestion, BUT sorry this is not possible. The
> org.netbeans.lib.cvsclient.command.annotate.AnnotateLine does not provide
> getMessage(). That was the reason i had to pass-through the commit message from
> AnnotationBar to ToolTipWindow to ToolTipContentPanel. The impl for Hg/Git...
> provide such a method, but the CVS-code is much older.
What i meant was that:
> new TooltipWindow(this, al, getCommitMessage(al));
is wrong because getCommitMessage method escapes the commit message so it can be viewed in HTML (replaced \n with <br> etc.). You should simply instantiate the window as:
> new TooltipWindow(this, al, al.getCommitMessage());
because the ToolTipWindow does not display HTML but a JTextPane.

Test your code with commit messages containing multiple lines and you'll see what i mean.

Created attachment 128083 [details]
Unavailable AnnotationLine.getCommitMessage

(In reply to comment #8)
> > Thanks for the suggestion, BUT sorry this is not possible. The
> > org.netbeans.lib.cvsclient.command.annotate.AnnotateLine does not provide
> > getMessage(). That was the reason i had to pass-through the commit message from
> > AnnotationBar to ToolTipWindow to ToolTipContentPanel. The impl for Hg/Git...
> > provide such a method, but the CVS-code is much older.
> What i meant was that:
> > new TooltipWindow(this, al, getCommitMessage(al));
> is wrong because getCommitMessage method escapes the commit message so it can
> be viewed in HTML (replaced \n with <br> etc.). You should simply instantiate
> the window as:
> > new TooltipWindow(this, al, al.getCommitMessage());
> because the ToolTipWindow does not display HTML but a JTextPane.
> 
> Test your code with commit messages containing multiple lines and you'll see
> what i mean.

Sorry i do not get it. In my sources there is no AnnotationLine.getCommitMessage method available. See screenshot.

i see, you're right, sorry. Anyway, my concern and point was completely different (that TTWindow cannot use return value from getCommitMessage(al)). I'll update the patch tomorrow to show what i mean.

Created attachment 128116 [details]
patch with tooltip window - sanatized - with StringBuilder - lines correctly displayed

updated patch that correctly handles commit messages with more than one line and displays the message correctly in the TTW

thanks for the patch, applied as http://hg.netbeans.org/core-main/rev/54ff034b9bce

Integrated into 'main-golden', will be available in build *201301290001* on http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/nightly/ (upload may still be in progress)
Changeset: http://hg.netbeans.org/main-golden/rev/54ff034b9bce
User: Benno Markiewicz <markiewb@netbeans.org>
Log: Issue #218932 - Backport of the tooltip-Window to CVS-module which allows to copy the commit message/author/date via the annotationbar