Working Set

What is a Working Set?

Doltgres has three kinds of changes: committed, staged and working. The working set is the set of changes that has not been staged or committed. To stage a change in a table you dolt_add() it to the staging set. The staging set is committed by issuing a dolt_commit() command and supplying the appropriate metadata.

If you start a Doltgres SQL server and start making changes, you are making changes to the working set. If you never make a commit, your working set is a standard Postgres database. So, a way to think about your working set is Doltgres without version control features, just a standard Postgres relational database.

How to use Working Sets

Working sets are used to isolate changes to your database from committed schema or data. Each branch gets it's own working set so you can make changes in isolation. If you don't like the changes made to a working set, you can dolt_reset() or dolt_checkout() to the previous commit.

Difference between Git Working Sets and Doltgres Working Sets

Git working sets change files. Doltgres working sets change tables.

On the command line, working set changes do follow to the newly checked out branch, just like Git. However, in SQL server mode, working set changes are not transferred to the newly checked out branch when you do a call dolt_checkout(). The working set changes stay on the branch they were originally made. This change was made to account for multiple users using the same branch in SQL server mode.

Example

Make changes in a working set

insert into docs values (3,0);
select * from dolt_status;
+------------+--------+----------+
| table_name | staged | status   |
+------------+--------+----------+
| docs       | false  | modified |
+------------+--------+----------+

See what's changed in your working set

select * from dolt_diff('HEAD', 'WORKING', 'docs');
+-------+-------+-----------+----------------------------+---------+---------+-------------+-------------------------+-----------+
| to_pk | to_c1 | to_commit | to_commit_date             | from_pk | from_c1 | from_commit | from_commit_date        | diff_type |
+-------+-------+-----------+----------------------------+---------+---------+-------------+-------------------------+-----------+
| 3     | 0     | WORKING   | 2024-04-30 22:59:20.504853 | NULL    | NULL    | HEAD        | 2024-04-30 22:57:42.846 | added     |
+-------+-------+-----------+----------------------------+---------+---------+-------------+-------------------------+-----------+

Reset a change to your working set

call dolt_reset('--hard');
select * from docs;
+----+----+
| pk | c1 |
+----+----+
| 0  | 0  |
| 1  | 1  |
| 2  | 2  |
+----+----+

Checkout a branch

insert into docs values (4,4);
select * from docs;
+----+----+
| pk | c1 |
+----+----+
| 0  | 0  |
| 1  | 1  |
| 2  | 2  |
| 3  | 0  |
| 4  | 4  |
+----+----+
call dolt_checkout('branch2');
+--------+
| status |
+--------+
| 0      |
+--------+
select * from docs ;
+----+----+
| pk | c1 |
+----+----+
| 0  | 0  |
| 1  | 1  |
| 2  | 2  |
| 3  | 0  |
+----+----+