I'm a strong advocate of commit early, commit often, but not everything fits neatly into a 20 line change, particularly on a legacy c++ codebase. Shelving lets

I'm a strong advocate of commit early, commit often, but not everything fits neatly into a 20 line change, particularly on a legacy c++ codebase. Shelving lets me pause and resume with a backup at the end of the day. > history, and undoing your mistakes/experiments. I don't need history or undoing mistakes when I'm shelving, I need a quick server side backup to show someone else something, or to "save" my work at the end of the day when it's going to run on 30 minutes into the next day. Branches may be superior, but a kitchen knife is superior to a pocket knife, yet I don't pull out my 8 inch steel knife to open an Amazon parcel .