How to commit to git

commit-howto.md

To really use the power of git, the maintainer/development team should follow these instructions:

After making several changes including several features that you want to check into git:

• commit them all at once using stash as the commit message
• Rename the current branch stash
• Then branch the previous commit once for each "feature" or series of commits dependent upon each other, then on each new branch:
• cherry pick from the stash, but don't commit yet
• instead, curate the commit into just the code you want, deleting and staging files as necessary for the feature
• then commit it to the appropriate branch (if it asks to save a stash or discard it before switching, discard it, we've already saved our own stash)
• Once that's finished, branch the original commit as master
• Then for each new branch:
• merge the branch 'as commit' into master
• optionally, modify the commit message message to be more precise, concise, or descriptive
• Once all branches are merged back into master, rebase stash onto master
• After working through merge conflicts, stash should be essentially the same as master
• If it is not, either:
• cherry pick and commit what's left back into master, or
• if it deserves more than one commit, create a branch following the same procedure as before
• Once stash is essentially the same as master, the stash branch can be deleted

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