I use `git log -S` very often to read the commit message for figuring why a change happened.
A wonderful reason to create atomic commits with good commit messages.
Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
141–150 of 287 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#142Hell yes, I use it daily. I'm in AAA gamedev and the codebase I deal with goes back 20+ years. The last 10 years are readily accessible in Perforce and the rest can be found in another version control system. I am forever grateful to past engineers for outlining WHY they made their changes, and not WHAT the changes were per se. With thousands of engineers that have come and gone, this is incredibly useful information…
This is a great comment, except for the last line, which is extreme hyperbole.
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#143Just recently I found a 7 years old regression in our codebase, I could pinpoint the exact commit where it was introduced. We use mercurial, I find hg grep and bisect really useful.
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#144I think there's some indirect psychological value that shouldn't be underestimated. People have a tendency to comment out unused code "in case they still need it". Or not delete unused stuff, because who knows what. I have the feeling that I'm much more inclined to just delete a bunch of code lines that "I might still need in some situation" if I know there's version control. Because even if it's unlikely, "I can get…
At an old employer, I wrote neat visualization that drew equal-potential curves through a sampled grid of points. Somewhat complicated, targeted for one specific feature.
I leave, but stay in touch with friends there. They completely turned the ship and that whole module was no longer part of the system. A few years later, I get a message from a buddy: “dude, we dug up your equal-potential curves thing from SVN and damn is it nice to work with. Good job! That just saved me a ton of time!”
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#145Of course. It usually goes like this:
- Why the heck is this here?!
- git blame, git log, git show
- Ahh...
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#146Yes, especially with projects with long history. You want to know who did what at a particular code block, and what it was like before. Since we tag all commits with a ticket name/number, we can go back to Jira and see the ticket that was responsible for that change.
This helps a ton when refactoring code in a project with alot of history. I know that this bit was done this way for a reason, but that reason could be anything.
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#147No. Nothing after 30-60 days. Always possible for very rare exception, but nothing in last 10 years
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#148Hell yes, I use it daily. I'm in AAA gamedev and the codebase I deal with goes back 20+ years. The last 10 years are readily accessible in Perforce and the rest can be found in another version control system. I am forever grateful to past engineers for outlining WHY they made their changes, and not WHAT the changes were per se. With thousands of engineers that have come and gone, this is incredibly useful information…
This is a great comment, except for the last line, which is extreme hyperbole.
Parent clearly stated it as opinion.
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#149Yes, yes, absolutely. I've looked at history going back 10+ years (at least). Many times. Two-year-old commits I consider to be fairly recent. I can't remember a specific reason why off the top of my head, but it was usually something to do with looking at the context around why some piece of code existed. The companies I've worked for also require commit messages to contain bug tracking IDs, which can provide furthe…
> There's also really not much of a reason to migrate from svn to git if svn is still working for your organization. But also not much reason against, given the quality of migration tools. The toughest nut to crack is the absence of that handy incrementing version counter.
The issue with the migration is the references (commit IDs) and the fact that branching best practices differ dramatically.
Re: Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?
#150Hell yes, I use it daily. I'm in AAA gamedev and the codebase I deal with goes back 20+ years. The last 10 years are readily accessible in Perforce and the rest can be found in another version control system. I am forever grateful to past engineers for outlining WHY they made their changes, and not WHAT the changes were per se. With thousands of engineers that have come and gone, this is incredibly useful information…
How's the AAA industry nowadays? I got out awhile ago (though HoN never really counted as AAA) but it was a fun ride at the time.
Is work life balance a bit better now, or does everyone still push themselves pretty hard?