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Comment by jakub_g | Hacker News Reader

FYI, in case you added reaaally a lot of stuff, and want to split it into smaller commits, it might be much more handy to do partial commits using Git GUI (select lines in the file & right click to have a popup menu with appropriate option). Also, don't do it the next time.

Side hint: for things like fixing typos, I found that creating a new branch, say 'typos', is quite handy solution to not do these kind of things in the commits that are meant to add new things / fix bugs. Just checkout typos, fix, commit, checkout master / feature branch.

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> Side hint: for things like fixing typos, I found that creating a new branch, say 'typos', is quite handy solution to not do these kind of things in the commits that are meant to add new things / fix bugs. Just checkout typos, fix, commit, checkout master / feature branch.

Could you maybe elaborate on this a little bit more? I don't think I quite understand this.

My understanding is that you'd have to do a 'git merge master' after you checkout 'typos', make the fix, commit, and then a 'git merge typos' after you checkout 'master'. Then wouldn't this add all of the typos commits into the master branch anyway?

I'm very likely missing something fundamental. (Perhaps my source control habits aren't up to snuff.)

Yep I wrote this with too much shortcuts. What I do is: git checkout typos, git rebase master, [fix typo & commit], git checkout master. This way I accumulate typo fixes in a separate branch, and merge a couple of them at once to master when I see fit (perhaps squashing the typo commits into one beforehand).

For typos, `commit --fixup` is an invaluable tool.

It creates commits with a special name that will be recognized `git rebase -i --autosquash`. It will merge commits with their fixups (+ whatever you want to do with `rebase -i`).

I was originally referring to fixing old typos (like spelling in documentation) that were in the repo forever.

This, from what I understand this will take effect only if you introduced a typo recently and then you rebase so that the typo-containing commit is included in the rebase. Nevertheless, it sounds interesting.

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