Re: [tlug] Chrome ate my profile

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull.stephen.fw@example.com>]

Coming back to this after spending a week solving a knapsack problem.[1]

Curt Sampson writes:
 > On 2018-03-19 17:13 +0900 (Mon), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > I don't understand how it can be easier than save, fix, save (look ma,
 > > no explicit git here!)
 > > ...
 > > Sounds exactly like what I do have except that I never need to invoke
 > > git explicitly for this functionality, and it's never on a branch that
 > > I might push.
 > 
 > I don't see how overall that's easier because you still need to turn
 > these "saved" things (wherever you're saving them) into commits

They *are* commits.  They're just on a branch that is used only by
this function, which function is invoked by XEmacs automatically every
time I save.  This is the same workflow that you describe, except that
I never invoke git explicitly until "git rebase --interactive": I just
save.  The after-save-hook makes sure that I'm on that branch, then
commits.  Then when I'm done with the work that requires a certain
amount of concentration (I can fix a typo but not much more than that
or I might lose the thread) I switch into "coalesce related commits"
mode.

So not only does saving mean I don't lose work if XEmacs crashes (this
doesn't happen as often as Mac OS locking up, so it's not really a
thing any more :-), it provides "parentheses" around small tasks that
distract from my main workflow.

In the rebase phase, all the typo fixes go on a "for immediate
release" branch, any small bug fixes or tiny improvements that still
need review go on another branch, and the "real work" goes on a
long-lived feature branch.  Then I reset the "auto" branch head to the
end of the feature branch, and start the process again.


Footnotes: 
[1]  You have a bunch of objects of various sizes, and a vessel of
fixed size you wish to fill exactly.  Choose a subset of the objects.
This is in general NP-hard[2], but it turns out to be quite tractable
when the objects are purchases (mostly of Kindle books, but there were
a couple of industrial strength laser printers and the like in there
too), and the vessel is a 100,000 yen budget that needs to be spent to
the last yen. :-)

[2]  No, I didn't solve the NP-hardness part. ;-)