git commit frequency

git version-control commit
Hamza Yerlikaya picture Hamza Yerlikaya · Jun 24, 2009 · Viewed 12.5k times · Source

Since i switched to git from svn i started make more commits every time i recompile and my tests pass i commit my work. In the end i end up committing function by function.

I also track some other projects using git like emacs,wordpress etc. I see that they do not commit that often. So i am wondering how ofthen do you commit?

Answer

Scott Chacon picture Scott Chacon · Jun 25, 2009

The guideline for the Git project itself (and the Linux project, AFAIK) is one commit per "logically separate changeset".

This is a little ambiguous, but you probably don't want to commit every few days if you're working on a project constantly, and you probably don't want to commit after every function change - if you've edited several functions in several different files, you want to commit all of the related functionality together if you can and provide a useful commit message with it. All of the code modified in each commit should be related, but it can (and probably should) certainly be across several files.

What you probably want to keep in mind is in code reviews. If someone is trying to decide if they should merge your work in, it's much easier for them to process the work being introduced if you have each commit logically contained and separate from each other. That lets you (or others) cherry pick work effectively - if you have three commits with one function modified in each but they're all coupled somehow - you can't apply one without the other two without breaking the codebase - then they should probably be squashed down to one commit.

Related questions

git: updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do not have locally

I'm working on a team with a few developers using git on BitBucket. We are all working on a dev branch, not pushing to master until a release. One of the developers committed incorrect code that overwrote my own by …

Read More
Git number of commits per author on all branches

I'd like to get the number of commits per author on all branches. I see that git shortlog -s -n Prints a very nice list but it is not counting the commits that are not yet merged from other branches. …

Read More
How to find commits by a specific user in Git?

Our project uses Git as the version control system and recently I needed to review someone's commits. How can I see a list of commits made by a specific user?

Read More