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by locknitpicker 15 days ago
> Isn't this solved if you squash the commits when merging the PR?

In theory, yes. Squashing is an extreme approach to merging fixup commits.

It also throws the baby out with the bathwater by removing individual commits that explain and clarify how and why some changes were introduced as part or a PR.

If your PRs are tiny and don't introduce major changes then squashing is ok. Instead, you should do the right thing and curate the set of commits featuring in your PR.
2 comments
munksbeer 14 days ago
It depends on what you think "the right thing is".

Our right thing sounds different to your right thing. Our right thing is PRs less than 500~ lines, and a single logical change only if the overall goal is complex.

For example, in your "right thing" it sounds like you'll have a refactor commit somewhere in the chain of commits in your PR, that might introduce 2000 lines of change, and other logically coupled changes in the same PR, all resulting in a large PR.

We prefer smaller, complete, mergable PRs. And therefore we normally only ever start with a single commit in the PR because the dev squashes everything before raising.

I don't know which way is better, but I do know that when I come across large PRs, I zone out and review quality drops. In fact, I just don't approve them.

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CuriouslyC 15 days ago
Making small atomic commits as you go in the age of AI tends not to go great because it forces too much human in the loop in a lot of cases, and the percentage of AI code rework is significantly higher than manual code, so the history tends to be harder to keep clean.

It's ironically easier to create a messy agent work branch then have the agent cherry pick independent PRs from it into atomic commits post-work.

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locknitpicker 14 days ago
> Making small atomic commits as you go in the age of AI tends not to go great because it forces too much human in the loop in a lot of cases (...)

You seem confused. In the age of AI your ai code assistants already do task-specific commits. In fact, you can easily create a skill to have ai do that for you. It can even use git history split.

You see where this is going?

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