Is it good idea to require to commit only working code?
- by Astronavigator
Sometimes I hear people saying something like "All committed code must be working". In some articles people even write descriptions how to create svn or git hooks that compile and test code before commit.
In my company we usually create one branch for a feature, and one programmer usually works in this branch. I often (1 per 100, I think and as I think with good reason) do non-compilable commits. It seems to me that requirement of "always compilable/stable" commits conflicts with the idea of frequent commits. A programmer would rather make one commit in a week than test the whole project's stability/compilability ten times a day. For only compilable code I use tags and some selected branches (trunk etc).
I see these reasons to commit not fully working or not compilable code:
If I develop a new feature, it is hard to make it work writing a few lines of code.
If I am editing a feature, it is again sometimes hard to keep code working every time.
If I am changing some function's prototype or interface, I would also make hundreds of changes, not mechanical changes, but intellectual. Sometimes one of them could cause me to carry out hundreds of commits (but if I want all commits to be stable I should commit 1 time instead of 100).
In all these cases to make stable commits I would make commits containing many-many-many changes and it will be very-very-very hard to find out "What happened in this commit?".
Another aspect of this problem is that compiling code gives no guarantee of proper working.
So is it good idea to require every commit to be stable/compilable?
Does it depends on branching model or CVS?
In your company, is it forbidden to make non compilable commits? Is it (and why) a bad idea to use only selected branches (including trunk) and tags for stable versions?
