Re: Feature Request git snap, Lightweight Commit Workflow for Iterative Development

From: Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 3, 2025, 13:13 UTC
Message-ID: <88CDEF6D-A01C-46BB-A394-CE0E3C3F9B87@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <aGWq7vBSYuuKW69o@fruit.crustytoothpaste.net>

Show 17 quoted lines

> Le 2 juil. 2025 à 17:56, brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> a écrit :
> 
> On 2025-07-02 at 18:30:17, Suraj Bhadrike wrote:
>> Hi Git contributors,
>> 
>> This proposal introduces a new command git snap  designed to support
>> highly iterative development workflows nowdays  influenced by AI
>> coding assistants.
>> 
>> The rise of AI assistants and agentic AI workflows has changed the
>> pace and nature of coding. A developer might cycle through dozens of
>> variations of a function or component in a short period while
>> collaborating with an AI.
> 
> I mean, I do this too without an AI.  I frequently want to make changes
> until something works, and then snapshot it and modify it to polish it
> and make it more presentable.

Yep. I think of this as “locally I do whatever I want; polish before publish.”

Show 9 quoted lines

> 
>> This feature would provide a soft commit or snapshot capability,
>> allowing developers to save their work state frequently and create a
>> new commit every time as a snapshot or checkpoint without a commit
>> message and flag where We can provide an option for developers to
>> include files at the start of snap Session.
> 
> I think a lot of this is achievable with current functionality, just in
> a slightly different way.

Agreed. My variant is something like

Repeat: { hack && commit -m wip --amend }

The first commit omits the amend option, of course, and I can inspect previous snapshots with the reflog.