Practical advice: how much Git is necessary?

Instructor note

  • 20 min teaching/discussion

What level of branching complexity is necessary for each project?

Simple personal projects

  • Typically start with just the main branch.

  • Use branches for unfinished/untested ideas.

  • Use branches when you are not sure about a change.

  • Use tags to mark important milestones.

Projects with few persons: you accept things breaking sometimes

  • It might be reasonable to commit to the main branch and feature branches.

Projects with few persons: changes are reviewed by others

  • You create new feature branches for changes.

  • Changes are reviewed before they are merged to the main branch (more about that in the collaborative Git lesson).

  • The main branch is write-protected and can only be changed with pull requests or merge requests.

When you distribute releases

  • If you want to patch releases, you probably need release branches.

  • The main branch and release branches are read-only.

  • Many branching models exist.

How about staging and committing?

  • It is OK to start committing directly by doing git commit SOMEFILE.

  • Commit early and often: rather create too many commits than too few. You can always combine commits later.

  • Once you commit, it is very, very hard to really lose your code.

  • Always fully commit (or stash) before you do dangerous things, so that you know you are safe. Otherwise it can be hard to recover.

  • Later you can start using the staging area.

  • Later start using git add -p and/or git commit -p.

How large should a commit be?

  • Better too small than too large (easier to combine than to split).

  • Often I make a commit at the end of the day (this is a unit I would not like to lose).

  • Smaller sized commits may be easier to review for others than huge commits.

  • Imperfect commits are better than no commits.

  • A commit should not contain unrelated changes to simplify review and possible repair/adjustments/undo later (but again: imperfect commits are better than no commits).

Keypoints

  • There is no one size fits all - start simple and grow your project.

Discussion

How do you [plan to] use Git?

  • Advanced users or beginners, please provide your input in the online collaborative document.