Little late today, I was busy working/running around/watching paint dry, so I’ll keep this brief. I’ve mentioned before that git can be like a game save, it protects your butt if things go wrong and you need to get back to a certain safer place. But I also like to use git commits as a well crafted story, or at least that’s what I want to present to the outside world. Having a lot of why doesn't this work or it does the things or rainbows and ponies (a real pr of mine at a job at one point) doesn’t really mean anything to anyone but me. And unfortunately it probably doesn’t mean much to me if I go back and look at it even a day later. So what’s a girl to do? Tell her own story of course.
First let me say, “rewriting history” in git is a bit of a controversial subject for some people. But at multiple jobs and in my preference I don’t have a problem with it as long as you’re not rewriting master or other people’s history. So what does that leave us? The ability to craft a really well documented pull request. I can explain you through the choices of my work. I can easily split out frontend and backend changes if different people need to look at different parts. I can make changes easier to find if they all happen on one file in one commit.
I’ve gotten lazier about this at my current job, but my goal is to get back in the habit. It’s good hygiene and leaves my mental health intact.
For better words than mine check out Nathan LeClaire’s Don’t Be Afraid of Git and a good visual tutorial can be found from the amazing Thoughtbot blog.
