How can work in progress commits help?

Work in progress (WIP) commits offer multiple benefits that can significantly enhance your development workflow:

1. Backup and Recovery: WIP commits allow developers to save their work frequently, ensuring that progress isn't lost due to unexpected issues like crashes or hardware failures. This acts similarly to hitting the save button, providing a reliable way to back up ongoing work 1.

2. Continuous Feedback: By committing code frequently, feedback cycles are shortened. Other team members can review changes sooner, allowing for quicker iterations and improvements. This method is especially beneficial in environments practicing trunk-based development, where frequent commits help prevent large, complex merges 1.

3. Cognitive Load Management: Regular WIP commits help maintain a less cluttered mental space, enabling developers to focus on current tasks without worrying about losing track of their progress. This approach helps in managing the cognitive overload often associated with larger, less frequent commits 2.

4. Efficient Rewriting and Rebasing: While some developers prefer WIP commits with detailed notes, others use them simply as placeholders. Upon finalizing the code, these commits can be rewritten or rebased to create a cleaner and more meaningful commit history 2.

5. Error Reduction: Committing smaller, incremental changes reduces the chance of significant merge conflicts and mistakes. This is because each change set is smaller and easier to integrate, making the overall process less error-prone 1.

In essence, WIP commits improve both individual and team productivity by ensuring regular backups, encouraging frequent feedback, reducing cognitive load, and minimizing errors during merges.