Re: Individual file snapshots

[Brian Gernhardt <benji@silverinsanity.com>]

On Feb 12, 2010, at 4:25 PM, Ron Garret wrote:

> Yeah, I considered that.  The problem with that is that the actual 
> process turns out to be pretty obtrusive.  The scenario is that I've 
> done a bunch of hacking on the main branch and I realize that it's going 
> nowhere.  Nothing is working, everything is a horrible mess that's 
> spinning wildly out of control.  I want to get rid of everything I've 
> done and start over from an earlier snapshot that I knew was working.  
> But I also want to keep a copy of this current messy state around for 
> reference just in case there's a snippet here and there that might be 
> salvageable later on.  I don't know of any easy way to save the messed 
> up file onto another branch.  I'd have to save the file somewhere (in 
> the stash maybe?), check out the snapshot branch, retrieve the saved 
> file, do the commit, and then switch back to the main branch.

Have you tried creating a new branch without saving the state?

git checkout -b failed-experiment
git commit -a -m "Back to the drawing board"
git checkout master

Or if a series of commits seem to have gone bad:

git commit -a -m "Well, that didn't work."
git branch failed-experiment
git reset --hard origin/master # or other good state

You can of course replace the -a to commit with the needed "git add <file>" commands and leave off the -m to leave real messages about why it went bad using $EDITOR.

~~ Brian