DVCS - How often and when to commit changes

Question

There is another thread here on StackOverflow, dealing wih how often to commit changes to source control. I want to put that in the context of using a DVCS like git or mercu

Answer 1

How often and when do you commit?

Very frequently. It could be as much as a few times in a hour, if the changes I've made work and make up a nice patch. Or it could be every few hours, depending on whether I am spending longer debugging things, or experimenting with risky changes.

Do you only commit changes when they build correctly?

Yes, almost always. I can't think of a reason right to check in code that didn't build correctly. There's plenty of reasons you might check in code that doesn't run correctly (in a branch) though.

How often and when do you push your changes (or file a pull request or similar)?

Normally only when a feature is complete and ready for integration testing. That means it has passed unit tests and other relevant tests, and the code/patch is clean enough that I consider it ready for review.

How do you approac developing a complex feature / doing a complex refactoring requiring many places to be touched? Are "private commits" that won't build ok? When finished, do you push them also to the master repository or do you bundle all your changes into a single changeset before pushing?

I would create a named branch for the feature (which would have traceability across design docs and Issue Tracking system). Commits that don't build would only really be ok on a private branch as an intermediate step, but would still be exceptional. Currently I don't rebase and merge the entire feature branch into a single changeset, though it is something I'm looking at doing in future. Changes are only pushed when appropriate tests are all passed.