git workflow for separating commits
- by gman
Best practices with git (or any VCS for that matter) is supposed to be to have each commit do the smallest change possible. But, that doesn't match how I work at all.
For example I recently I needed to add some code that checked if the version of a plugin to my system matched the versions the system supports. If not print a warning that the plugin probably requires a newer version of the system. While writing that code I decided I wanted the warnings to be colorized. I already had code that colorized error message so I edited that code. That code was in the startup module of one entry to the system. The plugin checking code was in another path that didn't use that entry point so I moved the colorization code into a separate module so both entry points could use it. On top of that, in order to test my plugin checking code works I need to go edit UI/UX code to make sure it tells the user "You need to upgrade".
When all is said and done I've edited 10 files, changed dependencies, the 2 entry points are now both dependant on the colorization code, etc etc. Being lazy I'd probably just git add . && git commit -a the whole thing. Spending 10-15 minutes trying to manipulate all those changes into 3 to 6 smaller commits seems frustrating which brings up the question
Are there workflows that work for you or that make this process easier?
I don't think I can some how magically always modify stuff in the perfect order since I don't know that order until after I start modifying and seeing what comes up.
I know I can git add --interactive etc but it seems, at least for me, kind of hard to know what I'm grabbing exactly the correct changes so that each commit is actually going to work. Also, since the changes are sitting in the current directory it doesn't seem like it would be easy to run tests on each commit to make sure it's going to work short of stashing all the changes. And then, if it were to stash and then run the tests, if I missed a few lines or accidentally added a few too many lines I have no idea how I'd easily recover from that. (as in either grab the missing lines from the stash and then put the rest back or take the few extra lines I shouldn't have grabbed and shove them into the stash for the next commit.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
PS: I hope this is an appropriate question. The help says development methodologies and processes
