alt Hacker NewsGit rebase isn't scary at all, what's scary is the git rebase cult. I'll probably die never really seeing the tangible benefit a meticulously curated git history provides but at least I saw a few hundred blog posts and hn comments declaring the moral failure that is not having the cleanest commit history. The cynic in me would say that people are over-identifying too much with their recent bikeshedding addiction (just like 10-page vim configs, custom built keyboards or whatever else promises them immense but immeasurable performance gains) but in reality I guess it's just completely different mental models about code. I have yet to look at any code or it's however dirty history and needed to consult a commit message to understand what it's there for but I'm looking forward to the day where one of my rebase colleagues fixes a bug with git bisect that wasn't efficiently fixable any other way.
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People are different, and I think we have to respect that. In my role I tend to have to fix problems in other people's code probably on a weekly basis. Commits that do too much, or too little, or are generally hard to understand are the number one reason this takes time. Crafting readable commits takes seconds out of your work day. Please be considerate to all your future colleagues.
I fix bugs will git bisect all the time. But it’s not practical if you don’t have a good commit history to begin with.
I use git history to understand wtf my colleagues, and myself, where doing and thinking 10 years ago. A well structured, squashed commit and a clean history helps A LOT. I can't tell you how often I find a 'Apply review changes' and 'Fix shit' commit with no context. I then need to go back in the blame history or find what branch/PR this belonged too on GH to find even the context of these changes. Perhaps you don't work on the kind off crappy code bases I am dealing with, but a bit of git discipline saves a fuckton of frustrations.
tbf, this says a lot more about the code base, my colleagues and the shitty, lazy culture at our company that leads to ZERO ownership and architecture ;)
I continual find the amount of ink spilled on having a clean commit history amazing, when you can basically get all the same benefits with:
git log --first-parent
git bisect --first-parent