For the last few years I’ve been trying to center my work around
creating what I consider to be the Perfect Commit. This is a single
commit that contains all of the following:
- The implementation: a single, focused change
- Tests that demonstrate the implementation works
- Updated documentation reflecting the change
- A link to an issue thread providing further context
Our job as software engineers generally isn’t to write new software
from scratch: we spend the majority of our time adding features and
fixing bugs in existing software.
The commit is our principle unit of work. It deserves to be treated
thoughtfully and with care.