Pair Programming and Git

I've read a fair amount about workflows with git. It seems the conventional wisdom is to create a branch related to some feature. I've tried to do that with prototyping (see my last post) but feature branches just don't work for me. Rather, I find that either I've made a complete hash out of something -- or I just like an earlier version better. I'm much more likely to say "You know, I like the version I had last night better." But when branches are feature-based, my time-based desires don't match.

That led me to the idea of having larger feature branches with smaller time-based ones. Pretty much all my production code is pair-programmed. We use a little app called Pomodoro on our Macs. It has a voice feature and every half hour, I have it say "OK, guys. Switch. And heeeeerrre we go!"

Before turning over the keyboard, the current typist commits the current branch and creates a new one using the current date and time. Something like "02Dec1430". When that half-hour is done, we switch places and start with "02Dec1500". Occasionally, we'll roll everything up to "develop" and then to "master" -- but I really like having the flexibility of a highly-granular, time-based branching system for git.