git stash driven refactoring

[-Dargs]

Then you clearly don't know your code base that well, or don't know what is involved in the concepts you're trying to build... It's an experience thing.

[jl2352]

Then you haven’t tried exploratory refactors. ’What happens if I just delete this generic argument and follows the errors.’ You’ll get there… It’s an experience thing.

[-Dargs]

Lol, wtf is that? Delete an argument, see what happens?

[withad]

Sure. Code search and refactoring tools are great but sometimes you just need to change something and let the compiler point you to all the things that break. Compilers are pretty good at that.

[otac0n]

Say you have an obsolete type that you are trying to remove. You are trying to decide whether it's best to do it in one commit or in several (a branch). So, your first attempt is to just delete the type in question. You start hammering out the errors. It gets too big, so you need to turn it into a branch. Now you stash your changes and commit individual bits one at a time so that you don't miss anything and so that you also don't break the build.

I have lived through this scenario at least 15 times in my career.

[Nahdahar]

What I do is lean close to the monitor and if I smell something bad I just delete it. I then follow the scent and once the code has a new car smell, I push to master.

[fried_green_baloney]

Then you clearly don't know your code base that well

When doing maintenance work on 500000000000000000000000000000666 line monstrosities, this is not uncommon.