Sebastian Nowicki wrote: [lots of good stuff] Thanks for your excellent points. I won't take this discussion too much further, because I think that it's getting to the 'beating a dead horse' phase, but I do appreciate the time that you and others have taken to let me know how I might use git better. I do agree with you that something is inherently different in the way that I am trying to use git than the way that it should be optimally used. I think that part of the problem is that I am used to commits being final, not something that you revisit and modify and coalesce (--squash) and rebase and what have you, so perhaps some of the methodologies I have become used to using need to be altered in an environment in which the natural way to do many things involves managing changes in these ways. If I need more advice on git, I'll go to the official git project for help ... Thanks, Bryan