How I managed to better handle my feature branches

Every time I think of a new idea on how to improve the analysis tool which I maintain, I immediately create a new feature branch and put down my thoughts at the time, with some possible proof-of-concept code. I assume a lot of other developers/coders/analysts do the same in their own specific ways. What I do, is I try to keep my commits and descriptions as informative as possible so it’s easy in the future for myself or others to trace the flow of ideas and the rationale. But we know the future confusion is at times inevitable.

The main problem is, in my opinion, that we cannot get out of the bubble of ‘now’ far enough to describe the problem and/or suggested solution in enough detail to make it easily traceable in the future. For example, today I revisited some old feature branch where in the description of a commit I wrote ‘need to figure out why it does not make sense’. Unfortunately, I cannot see now what ‘making sense’ actually is.

I created a branch called feature-tracker which is always exactly one commit ahead of dev in which a feature log is added. The purpose of this log is to describe the desired and actual behaviour as I make changes. My minimal log file has two sections:

Any time I wish to add a feature, I create a branch from this branch, rebase with the dev branch, and start making changes to both the source code and the log file. I find this approach much easier in terms of tracking the changes and the rationale behind them. It also allows me to list the feature-specific to-do’s. When finished, to commit the sourcecode changes and discard the log file changes (or any unwanted additional changes) I simply do:

The reason the last commit is reset is to customise the feature log as you wish, but it is not really necessary. I then add the feature/change description, possibly with some supplementary code. For example:

This small shift has made prioritising work much smoother for me. As when priorities change, I’m not too worried about losing momentum if I switch to another task. Likewise, re-visiting a work from past days/weeks is not a nightmare anymore. Similarly, if other contributors were to build on my work, they would have a better idea of where to start.

If you have had a similar challenge, I would love to hear about your approach.

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