4 ms·

"Every commit should be runnable, that is we should be able to git checkout any commit and get a functional code base. This means no “WIP” commits..." I strongl

by Josh5 5y ago

"Every commit should be runnable, that is we should be able to git checkout any commit and get a functional code base. This means no “WIP” commits..." I strongly disagree with this.

c_s_guy 5y ago
I'm not experienced enough to form a strong opinion on this. Could you provide some reasons why you strongly disagree? At first glance, it seems like a beneficial goal. If I ever need to checkout different points of history to find a breaking change, it'd be nice if I can run the code after every `git checkout`.
Eikon 5y ago
I disagree too, I prefer a lot of small commits. What some people call "keeping a clean history" is actually destroying history and discarding a lot of important information. I saw a lot of people merging branches a single commit "to keep the history clean" while in fact it just made the history less legible and less reversible.
- alFReD-NSH 5y ago
  The article is suggesting that while you are working you can commit as you go, quick and dirty, irrelevant of the changes. Once you get something working and it's ready to be merged, then you can go back rewrite the branch, removing back and forth changes and writing a good commit message with the reason for it for every one change. This way, the history would be meaningful instead of it be littered by fix up commits and it makes reverts easy.
  - Eikon 5y ago
    > The article is suggesting that while you are working you can commit as you go, quick and dirty Why would someone do that? I’d argue that if there is cleaning to be done, it should be done way before something is ready to be merged, while context is fresh in your head. Also, cleaning before something is ready to be merged will lead to sloppy history removal as, often, people are eager to merge for a variety of reasons, and rewriting history may not be seen as a priority.
    - alFReD-NSH 5y ago
      I personally commit and push to a branch when I think there's enough changes for someone else to review my work (of course with WIP flag), in case if someone is curious and once any of the changes are ready to be merged (this can be before the review changes), I'll clean up and write nice commits. I guess it's personal preference, I don't recall losing context, as I don't let too much of time passed. And I actually ensure nice commits are written before code review otherwise it might be harder for the reviewer to get the context of the changes.
- Vinnl 5y ago
  According to logic that you should also always commit before you hit Ctrl+Z. Of course you have to consider what history is relevant and create relevant commits for those. But a WIP commit at the end of the day is rarely more relevant when split up from the finishing up of that work the next morning.
jonjonsonjr 5y ago
Can you explain why? I've found that it is a lot simpler to use git bisect if every commit builds.
- olejorgenb 5y ago
  git bisect --first-parent Every merge commit should build is a more reasonable policy
- cortesoft 5y ago
  There are two competing interests, and the author suggests cleaning up after so that you can satisfy both. The first interest is what you said, for every commit to build. The second interest is to help prevent loss during development. If I am working on something and need to finish for the day, but haven't yet got the code to a working state, I want to be able to commit and push my code in case something happens to my laptop. Also, sometimes I am making a series of big changes, but I need to make them all for the code to work. I want to have checkpoint along the way, in case I need to undo something (or even just see what I have changed since the checkpoint!) committing WIP code that doesn't build lets you do that. We usually solve this problem with squash merges, so every commit on the main branch is the full working feature, but there are downsides to that technique.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure they mean every commit on `master` or `develop`. Not every commit in your `add_new_feature` branch.
    - Forge36 5y ago
      It's in the ambiguity we can discuss where the rules make sense :)
ktross 5y ago
I agree with the idea, but disagree with the approach. This seems like a lot of extra work for not much, or maybe even less, benefit. The process I've set up for my team allows us to get the best of both worlds, in my opinion, with almost no extra effort: 1. Create a branch and open a pull request. Nothing gets pushed directly to master. 2. After the pull request has been tested and reviewed, we Squash and Merge into master on GitHub with a single button click. This way we end up with a single commit in master for each feature, bugfix, etc. There's also a link to the PR in the commit message where you can view the individual commits that were squashed as well as links to any related Jira issues.
- bonzini 5y ago
  The individual commits disappear if the branch or repo used in the pull request are deleted.
  - bengale 5y ago
    When I’ve done this before the commit messages get listed in the squash commit.
    - bonzini 5y ago
      The list is useless, it's the contents that are helpful when debugging (and the wip commits just get in the way).
      - MereInterest 5y ago
        Exactly! Suppose feature A is implemented (commit 1). Then it is discovered that the original implementation breaks feature B, and that is resolved (commit 2). In merge workflows, you have a merge commit on main, while commit 1 and 2 are maintained. In rebase/squash workflows, you have a single commit on main, with both changes. If 6 months later I find that the commit broke some feature C, I really want to know if it was the main change or the compatibility fix that did it.
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
You can still have WIP commits, you just clean them up before you share them, i.e. squash. It doesn't mean you have to reduce your work to a single commit -- that's silly -- but it does mean building a narrative of changes. Take a look at patches in the LKML and their associated revisions. This is the most sane approach to history. Changes are broken up logically, nearly all commits in a patch series are individually functional/correct, and in their presented order they tell a story for the given feature. Your "update" or "whoops" or "wip" or "address feedback" commits are, almost universally, entirely useless. There's no point in checking out one of those commits. They don't help tell a narrative to uniformed readers. They're just noise.
- ozim 5y ago
  In the end a lot of features end up being single commits. Crafting commits is hard if one wants perfect commits and most of us don't have time to do that. If I implement text-box with a save button there is no way I can functionally commit "working change" where I only have a text-box or have a save button separately. There is nothing wrong with that I believe. I think there is much more wrong with insisting on keeping "history" so people think that their "whoops" or "wip" are important.
  - blowski 5y ago
    You’re exactly right. All comments regarding “how you should use Git” (and many comments in general) could be prefaced with nature of the project. A predominantly markup based project worked on by a whole team of juniors will have different needs to a C codebase worked on by a single senior. There’s not one correct way, just alternative ways that are optimal in some situations.
  - usr1106 5y ago
    > Crafting commits is hard if one wants perfect commits and most of us don't have time to do that. I can agree with the first part, because in my current job we do it. Some more than others, but it's recommended. Throwing some naturally grown git history to review is making the life of the reviewer hard. Doesn't matter whether you belong to those who make a lot of WIP commits because you are paranoid of losing some idea or whether you only commit once when everything is ready, because you are shy of showing your trial and error mess. Probably you are also correct that most people don't invest the time to do it. That's why there is more bad code on the planet than good. It's hacked together hastily and not reviewed properly because the history is not reviewer-friendly. I'm sure in some organizations quality work is not tolerated because "we don't have the time".
Forge36 5y ago
Every commit to main should be runable. There's no worse way to start a project than debugging why it won't run or worse won't compile. Keeping every branch would preserve the detailed history, unfortunately these extra branches can create their own noise.
hnjst 5y ago
I'll take an intermediary position. Commits on a WiP branch don't need to let the repo in a working state, however I like when said branch has its history rewritten so that each commit is mostly a working unit change before submitting the branch for merging. You definitely shouldn't restrain from committing often during development, however having a cherrypickable branch history when merging instead of "let's squash this mess and forget about it" has value to me.
omegalulw 5y ago
Why? It's an excellent principle, especially for debugging. The biggest benefits of your commits and commit messages are not you but future code reviewers. Imagine someone reads the blame on a file and sees WiP commits (that absolutely will eventually happen), that's nightmare fuel.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  As someone who has had to do some "deep archeology debugging" of legacy code, I'd much rather see that git blame full of WIP commits from junior developers than squash/rebase commits from the same. Questions like "was this an intentional regression or bad test behavior from an in progress commit or an accidental regression from a bad merge?" are much easier to answer when you've got "more parts of how the sausage was made" to work with. When I'm not doing "deep archeology" I have tools like git praise --first-parent to focus on the high level (completed PR merge commits).

by Josh5 5y ago

"Every commit should be runnable, that is we should be able to git checkout any commit and get a functional code base. This means no “WIP” commits..." I strongly disagree with this.

c_s_guy 5y ago

I'm not experienced enough to form a strong opinion on this. Could you provide some reasons why you strongly disagree? At first glance, it seems like a beneficial goal. If I ever need to checkout different points of history to find a breaking change, it'd be nice if I can run the code after every `git checkout`.

Eikon 5y ago

I disagree too, I prefer a lot of small commits. What some people call "keeping a clean history" is actually destroying history and discarding a lot of important information. I saw a lot of people merging branches a single commit "to keep the history clean" while in fact it just made the history less legible and less reversible.

alFReD-NSH 5y ago
The article is suggesting that while you are working you can commit as you go, quick and dirty, irrelevant of the changes. Once you get something working and it's ready to be merged, then you can go back rewrite the branch, removing back and forth changes and writing a good commit message with the reason for it for every one change. This way, the history would be meaningful instead of it be littered by fix up commits and it makes reverts easy.
- Eikon 5y ago
  > The article is suggesting that while you are working you can commit as you go, quick and dirty Why would someone do that? I’d argue that if there is cleaning to be done, it should be done way before something is ready to be merged, while context is fresh in your head. Also, cleaning before something is ready to be merged will lead to sloppy history removal as, often, people are eager to merge for a variety of reasons, and rewriting history may not be seen as a priority.
  - alFReD-NSH 5y ago
    I personally commit and push to a branch when I think there's enough changes for someone else to review my work (of course with WIP flag), in case if someone is curious and once any of the changes are ready to be merged (this can be before the review changes), I'll clean up and write nice commits. I guess it's personal preference, I don't recall losing context, as I don't let too much of time passed. And I actually ensure nice commits are written before code review otherwise it might be harder for the reviewer to get the context of the changes.
Vinnl 5y ago
According to logic that you should also always commit before you hit Ctrl+Z. Of course you have to consider what history is relevant and create relevant commits for those. But a WIP commit at the end of the day is rarely more relevant when split up from the finishing up of that work the next morning.

jonjonsonjr 5y ago

Can you explain why? I've found that it is a lot simpler to use git bisect if every commit builds.

olejorgenb 5y ago
git bisect --first-parent Every merge commit should build is a more reasonable policy
cortesoft 5y ago
There are two competing interests, and the author suggests cleaning up after so that you can satisfy both. The first interest is what you said, for every commit to build. The second interest is to help prevent loss during development. If I am working on something and need to finish for the day, but haven't yet got the code to a working state, I want to be able to commit and push my code in case something happens to my laptop. Also, sometimes I am making a series of big changes, but I need to make them all for the code to work. I want to have checkpoint along the way, in case I need to undo something (or even just see what I have changed since the checkpoint!) committing WIP code that doesn't build lets you do that. We usually solve this problem with squash merges, so every commit on the main branch is the full working feature, but there are downsides to that technique.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure they mean every commit on `master` or `develop`. Not every commit in your `add_new_feature` branch.
  - Forge36 5y ago
    It's in the ambiguity we can discuss where the rules make sense :)

ktross 5y ago

I agree with the idea, but disagree with the approach. This seems like a lot of extra work for not much, or maybe even less, benefit. The process I've set up for my team allows us to get the best of both worlds, in my opinion, with almost no extra effort: 1. Create a branch and open a pull request. Nothing gets pushed directly to master. 2. After the pull request has been tested and reviewed, we Squash and Merge into master on GitHub with a single button click. This way we end up with a single commit in master for each feature, bugfix, etc. There's also a link to the PR in the commit message where you can view the individual commits that were squashed as well as links to any related Jira issues.

bonzini 5y ago
The individual commits disappear if the branch or repo used in the pull request are deleted.
- bengale 5y ago
  When I’ve done this before the commit messages get listed in the squash commit.
  - bonzini 5y ago
    The list is useless, it's the contents that are helpful when debugging (and the wip commits just get in the way).
    - MereInterest 5y ago
      Exactly! Suppose feature A is implemented (commit 1). Then it is discovered that the original implementation breaks feature B, and that is resolved (commit 2). In merge workflows, you have a merge commit on main, while commit 1 and 2 are maintained. In rebase/squash workflows, you have a single commit on main, with both changes. If 6 months later I find that the commit broke some feature C, I really want to know if it was the main change or the compatibility fix that did it.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago

You can still have WIP commits, you just clean them up before you share them, i.e. squash. It doesn't mean you have to reduce your work to a single commit -- that's silly -- but it does mean building a narrative of changes. Take a look at patches in the LKML and their associated revisions. This is the most sane approach to history. Changes are broken up logically, nearly all commits in a patch series are individually functional/correct, and in their presented order they tell a story for the given feature. Your "update" or "whoops" or "wip" or "address feedback" commits are, almost universally, entirely useless. There's no point in checking out one of those commits. They don't help tell a narrative to uniformed readers. They're just noise.

ozim 5y ago
In the end a lot of features end up being single commits. Crafting commits is hard if one wants perfect commits and most of us don't have time to do that. If I implement text-box with a save button there is no way I can functionally commit "working change" where I only have a text-box or have a save button separately. There is nothing wrong with that I believe. I think there is much more wrong with insisting on keeping "history" so people think that their "whoops" or "wip" are important.
- blowski 5y ago
  You’re exactly right. All comments regarding “how you should use Git” (and many comments in general) could be prefaced with nature of the project. A predominantly markup based project worked on by a whole team of juniors will have different needs to a C codebase worked on by a single senior. There’s not one correct way, just alternative ways that are optimal in some situations.
- usr1106 5y ago
  > Crafting commits is hard if one wants perfect commits and most of us don't have time to do that. I can agree with the first part, because in my current job we do it. Some more than others, but it's recommended. Throwing some naturally grown git history to review is making the life of the reviewer hard. Doesn't matter whether you belong to those who make a lot of WIP commits because you are paranoid of losing some idea or whether you only commit once when everything is ready, because you are shy of showing your trial and error mess. Probably you are also correct that most people don't invest the time to do it. That's why there is more bad code on the planet than good. It's hacked together hastily and not reviewed properly because the history is not reviewer-friendly. I'm sure in some organizations quality work is not tolerated because "we don't have the time".

Forge36 5y ago

Every commit to main should be runable. There's no worse way to start a project than debugging why it won't run or worse won't compile. Keeping every branch would preserve the detailed history, unfortunately these extra branches can create their own noise.

hnjst 5y ago

I'll take an intermediary position. Commits on a WiP branch don't need to let the repo in a working state, however I like when said branch has its history rewritten so that each commit is mostly a working unit change before submitting the branch for merging. You definitely shouldn't restrain from committing often during development, however having a cherrypickable branch history when merging instead of "let's squash this mess and forget about it" has value to me.

omegalulw 5y ago

Why? It's an excellent principle, especially for debugging. The biggest benefits of your commits and commit messages are not you but future code reviewers. Imagine someone reads the blame on a file and sees WiP commits (that absolutely will eventually happen), that's nightmare fuel.

WorldMaker 5y ago
As someone who has had to do some "deep archeology debugging" of legacy code, I'd much rather see that git blame full of WIP commits from junior developers than squash/rebase commits from the same. Questions like "was this an intentional regression or bad test behavior from an in progress commit or an accidental regression from a bad merge?" are much easier to answer when you've got "more parts of how the sausage was made" to work with. When I'm not doing "deep archeology" I have tools like git praise --first-parent to focus on the high level (completed PR merge commits).