Refining patches using git

Here are some pointers how you can use git to create a clean set of commits for possible inclusion in Erlang/OTP.

Amending to previous git commit

If you forgot to add a file to the previous commit, or similar mistakes, or want to edit the commit message, then git commit --amend can help you.

Amend will not create a new commit on top of HEAD, but instead open the last commit, change it and replace it with the new amended commit. This means that you should never amend to a published commit.

Select chunks to add to index

Interactively choose hunks of patch between the index and the work tree and add them to the index. This gives the user a chance to review the difference before adding modified contents to the index.

This effectively runs git add --interactive, but bypasses the initial command menu and directly jumps to the patch subcommand.

See “interactive mode”:http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-add.html#_interactive_mode for details.

Interactive mode in git rebase

Interactive rebase allow you to clean up your commit history by:

• removing commits
• splitting commits
• squashing commits (like git commit --amend)
• open up commits for editing
• reword commit messages

See interactive mode for details.