Best practices

Review before committing

Always review your changes before committing them to ensure code quality and prevent mistakes.

Use git diff and git status to review staged and unstaged changes before committing. This helps catch errors, debug statements, and unintended changes.

Bad

git add .
# Blindly added accidental changes
# to the next commit.
git commit -m "Fixed login bug"
git push

Committing without reviewing changes.

Good

git add .
# Review changes before committing.
git diff --staged
git commit -m "Fixed login bug"
git push

# Stage only the intended file.
git add src/login.js
# Still, review before committing.
git diff --staged
git commit -m "Fixed login bug"
git push

Review changes before the commit to prevent accidental changes pushed to the repository.

What can typically slip through without a review

Debugging leftovers, such as console.log statements, temporary variables/functions, etc.

Commented-out code, completed TODOs.

Changes unrelated to the next commit. Happens often when you work on several features simultaneously.

Temporary API keys or other secrets that should not be in the repository. These should rather be added to .gitignore.

Overall code quality issues, such as syntax errors, typos, or formatting problems. Looking over the code before committing helps catch these because you can focus on the changes made rather than the entire file while reviewing the diff.

Useful review commands

See what files have changed:

git status

Review unstaged changes:

git diff

Review staged changes:

git diff --staged

Review changes in a specific file:

git diff src/auth.js

Show detailed changes with context:

git diff --word-diff

Review in a VS Code-based editor

If you use VS Code, Cursor, Antigravity IDE, or another VS Code-based editor, reviewing uncommitted changes in the GUI is straightforward. Open the Source Control panel, and you'll see the files changed in your working tree.

Oops, I forgot to remove a TODO comment for the change I made. — Oops, I forgot to remove a TODO comment for the change I've made.

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