Volume of commits

Hi List,

I was wondering -- whenever I see Git patches committed to projects like the Linux kernel or Git itself, the commits always seems to be committing rather large changes and be rather well-defined in terms of what they change.

When I develop for myself, I usually commit incrementally quite a bit, if for no other reason because Git won't let me switch between branches if I don't commit first. I usually try to keep my commits well-defined, but I don't manage to get anywhere close to what I see when I look at the history of Linux or Git.

So what I'm wondering is how you people manage to do this? Do you actually always commit changes this way (and, in that case, how do you switch between branches)? Or do you somehow aggregate the smaller commits into larger patches and recommit them? Or is there some third possibility that I'm missing?

Fredrik Tolf