Re: 'commit -a' safety (was: Re: Please default to 'commit -a' when no changes were added)

On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 06:59:33PM +0200, Wincent Colaiuta wrote:

El 24/04/2010, a las 18:42, Petr Baudis escribió:

quoted

Have you ever done this mistake? If you have done some extensive index
editing, it is actually a major PITA to restore, and can be even
destructive if your index and working tree are too much out-of-sync
(this does happen to me not so seldom while I also use -a a lot for
trivial commits).

Yes I have occasionally committed more than I meant to, but rarely much more, and almost never due to using "git commit -a", seeing as I hardly ever use it. I am of the "commit early and often" school, and my most common pattern is committing tiny batches of changes which I review frequently with "git diff" and then again by staging them with "git add --patch" (aliased as "git patch" seeing as I use it so often).

I also commit early and often, but I just do the review with "git diff"
and then commit right away, I guess I don't see much value to do another
pass staging everything using "git add -p".

quoted

quoted

IMO, the fact that the commit message editor is populated with a list of changed files that will be included in the commit is enough for people to see what's actually going to happen.

BTW, I almost always use -m instead of the commit editor. ;-)

Are you not a big fan of "subject line + justification" commit message format? Consider it one of the perks of using the format: your editor will show you a nice summary that gives you yet another chance to double-check what you're about to commit.

I'm a huge fan of "subject line + justification", so I use multiple -m
parameters; frequently, for simple changes subject line is enough, in
most of the other cases the justification is a one-liner as well, and
only in the rest of the cases I defer to the editor.

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
When I feel like exercising, I just lie down until the feeling
goes away.  -- xed_over