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There is obviously a point where you do not want full history. For example, it would absurd to use your editor's undo history tree with keystroke level granular

There is obviously a point where you do not want full history. For example, it would absurd to use your editor's undo history tree with keystroke level granularity as your VCS, because in most of those points in history, the code won't even compile because you were in the middle of typing a word. If your goal is to be able to revert the codebase to a previous version, then you want your history to a series of well prepared, atomic changes where at each point the software is actually functional.

naasking 3y ago
Clearly that's the reason you make a commit to begin with. Erasing that commit history is just silly.
- seba_dos1 3y ago
  There are a lot of reasons to make a commit other than wanting to make an atomic change meant to be integrated onto shared repository. Ignoring those is just silly.
  - naasking 3y ago
    I agree 100%, and never said otherwise, but this seems like an orthogonal point to what we're discussing here.
- rhinoceraptor 3y ago
  I make a commit whenever I want to save my progress, and rarely is it ever in a state that could even be called a "version" of the software that one would want to revert to, until my feature branch is complete and ready for code review. At that point I have a much better idea of the scope of my changes, and I can revise them into a few coherent commits, rather than a mess of "WIP" commits that are not a useful history to keep.
  - naasking 3y ago
    > and I can revise them into a few coherent commits, Why bother with this step at all? It's literally pointless and serves only to stroke an (IMO) silly aesthetic preference. > rather than a mess of "WIP" commits that are not a useful history to keep. I also disagree that WIP commits are not useful history. You might have explored 2 or 3 different abstractions to solve a problem, and picked one but it turned out to be the wrong one, and one of the others would have been a better choice, but now you've lost the history where you explored these options. Are you suggesting it's no loss to erase those other commits and the context around which you thought it wasn't a good choice at the time?

naasking 3y ago

Clearly that's the reason you make a commit to begin with. Erasing that commit history is just silly.

seba_dos1 3y ago
There are a lot of reasons to make a commit other than wanting to make an atomic change meant to be integrated onto shared repository. Ignoring those is just silly.
- naasking 3y ago
  I agree 100%, and never said otherwise, but this seems like an orthogonal point to what we're discussing here.
rhinoceraptor 3y ago
I make a commit whenever I want to save my progress, and rarely is it ever in a state that could even be called a "version" of the software that one would want to revert to, until my feature branch is complete and ready for code review. At that point I have a much better idea of the scope of my changes, and I can revise them into a few coherent commits, rather than a mess of "WIP" commits that are not a useful history to keep.
- naasking 3y ago
  > and I can revise them into a few coherent commits, Why bother with this step at all? It's literally pointless and serves only to stroke an (IMO) silly aesthetic preference. > rather than a mess of "WIP" commits that are not a useful history to keep. I also disagree that WIP commits are not useful history. You might have explored 2 or 3 different abstractions to solve a problem, and picked one but it turned out to be the wrong one, and one of the others would have been a better choice, but now you've lost the history where you explored these options. Are you suggesting it's no loss to erase those other commits and the context around which you thought it wasn't a good choice at the time?