Chrissie

Posted on Jul 30, 2020

How to write a good commit message

#git #codenewbie #beginners #github

A commit message is a short description of the changes you've made to a file added before committing the changes.

Good commit messages are important not only for others who you may be collaborating on the project but also for you, to keep track of all your commits and knowing exactly what changes where maybe during that particular commit.

Even if you're working on a personal project, I'd recommend that you start getting in the habit of writing good commit messages.

This is the format that I use most of the time (this may change depending on your preference or organization your working for):

type: subject

body (optional)

footer (optional)

1. Type

feat - a new feature
fix - a bug fix
docs - changes in documentation
style - everything related to styling
refactor - code changes that neither fixes a bug or adds a feature
test - everything related to testing
chore - updating build tasks, package manager configs, etc

2. Subject

This contains a short description of the changes made. It shouldn't be greater than 50 characters, should begin with a capital letter and written in the imperative eg. Add instead of Added or Adds.

3. Body

The body is used to explain what changes you made and why you made them. Not all commits are complex enough that they need a body, especially if you are working on a personal project alone, and as such writing a body is optional.

A blank line between the body and the subject is required and each line should have no more than 72 characters.

4. Footer

The footer is also optional and mainly used when you are using an issue tracker to reference the issue ID.

Example of a good commit message used by Udacity student Udacity Git Commit Message Style Guide

feat: Summarize changes in around 50 characters or less

More detailed explanatory text, if necessary. Wrap it to about 72
characters or so. In some contexts, the first line is treated as the
subject of the commit and the rest of the text as the body. The
blank line separating the summary from the body is critical (unless
you omit the body entirely); various tools like log, shortlog
and rebase can get confused if you run the two together.

Explain the problem that this commit is solving. Focus on why you
are making this change as opposed to how (the code explains that).
Are there side effects or other unintuitive consequences of this
change? Here's the place to explain to them.

Further paragraphs come after blank lines.

Bullet points are okay, too

Typically a hyphen or asterisk is used for the bullet, preceded
by a single space, with blank lines in between, but conventions
vary here

If you use an issue tracker, put references to them at the bottom,
like this:

Resolves: #123
See also: #456, #789

A more practical example:

docs: Fix typo in README.md

Top comments (70)

Andreas • Jul 30 '20 • Edited

Short and clear, thank you for this article!
I tend to use emojis for the type - it shows the type of the commit at first glance, e.g.:

➕ :heavy_plus_sign: when adding a file or implementing a feature
🔨 :hammer: when fixing a bug or issue
💚 :green_heart: when improving code or comments
⚡ :zap: when improving performance
📜 :scroll: when updating docs or readme
🔑 :key: when dealing with security
🔁 :repeat: when updating dependencies or data
✅ :white_check_mark: when a new release was built
👕 :shirt: when refactoring or removing linter warnings
❌ :x: when removing code or files

... and looks awesome in the commit history:

Thinh Nguyen • Jul 30 '20 • Edited

Thanks for your tip!

Here is the web for other Git emoji ideas: gitmoji.carloscuesta.me/

For me, it looks too much to remember,

so I just use some emojis to keep it simple:

🎉 :tada: initial commit 🎉

🚀 :rocket: [Add] when implementing a new feature

🔨 :hammer: [Fix] when fixing a bug or issue

🎨 :art: [Refactor] when refactor/improving code

🚧 :construction: [WIP]

📝 :pencil: [Minor] Some small updates

Dan Jones • Aug 3 '20

It is too much to remember. I use github.com/carloscuesta/gitmoji-cli so that I don't have to remember which emoji is used for which type. It's a git commit hook, so I just do git commit, and it interactively helps me pick the appropriate emoji, write my commit message, and then drops it into my editor to make changes as needed.

Jérôme Gully • Aug 5 '20

If you must use an additional tool to remember your emoji meaning, I bet other too are lost for the interpretation of the emoji, once the wow effect has passed, I think words are much easier and quicker to understand :)

Andreas • Aug 5 '20

I almost always use both: emoji for recognizing the commit type at first glance and text for a clear and unambiguous description 👍🏻

Jérôme Gully • Aug 5 '20

yes but even for the commit type, I find a word more meaningful than an emoji (and new people on the project / people reading commits without being part of the project) don't need to learn what emoji corresponds to what :).

Andreas • Aug 5 '20

You make using emojis sound like rocket science 😅 we're talking about little pictures with clear content. A hammer is for fixing something, a scroll is for something documentation related. There really isn't much to learn 🤷‍♂️

Andreas • Jul 30 '20

My pleasure 😊
This is also a nice interpretation, in the end it's a matter of taste, I think.

𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️ • Jul 31 '20 • Edited

I hate when people do stuff like this. It just looks confusing in the git log. Just use unicode emojis instead, they work everywhere.

BTW my favourite emojis for commit messages: 🎆🎊🎉😖💢😅 (I usually put them at the end of the commit message though)

Andreas • Aug 3 '20

Thank you for this valuable addition. Most of the terminals / bash / consoles support way more than unicode emojis nowadays. So that shouldn't be a problem for most of us. Here is, what my git log looks like:

𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️ • Aug 3 '20

Unicode emojis are standardized though, while the :: notation is not.

João Victor • Jul 30 '20

I never thought to use emojis for that LOL. THIS'LL HELP ME A LOT. 🤩

Andreas • Jul 31 '20

Glad I could help 😊

Banji • Jul 31 '20

Wow, it looks so awesome.
Tnx for sharing your tips :)

Andreas • Jul 31 '20

My pleasure 😊

Banji • Jul 31 '20

I think it would be better to write a complete post about the way you are using Emojis!
Keep it up ;)

Andreas • Jul 31 '20

Thank you for this suggestion and the encouragement - I'll draft this to my list of post ideas 👍🏻

Banji • Jul 31 '20 • Edited

Nice to hear that you found my suggestion cool.
I'm waiting for your amazing post.

Keep Moving Forward ツ

Code with 💛

🅑🅐🅝🅙🅘

Luke Miller • Aug 4 '20

I ALWAYS forget that emojis are valid in all kinds of spaces now. I often use them in debug console messages to make it visual and easy to search, but using them in this git commit message format is super handy. Thanks for the recommendation!

Andreas • Aug 5 '20

You're very welcome, I'm glad it's useful for you 😊

Chrissie • Jul 30 '20 • Edited

I've seen emojis being used in some projects but they always seemed intimidating to me, I'll have to look more into how to use them

Andreas • Jul 31 '20

It needs a little time to getting used to it, but then you don't want to be without it anymore, I promise 😂

Karl Taylor • Aug 20 '20

I LOVE THIS. I might even print it out and stick on my wall. Thankyou!

Andreas • Aug 21 '20

You're welcome 😊

Karen Efereyan • Sep 18 '20

Looks so cool.

Andreas • Sep 18 '20

Thank You 😊

rabbitzzc • Aug 6 '20

use this gitmoji.carloscuesta.me/

Sagar • Aug 2 '20

I'm using git alias to create a beautiful commit message with emoji and my commit message structure looks like this.

[emoji] <type>(scope): <message>

e.g.

🐞 FIX(pages): security issue fix on pages table

Here is my .gitconfig

# Git Commit, Add all and Push — in one step.
cap = "!f() { git commit -m \"$@\"; }; f"
# NEW.
new = "!f() { git cap \"📦 NEW($1): $2\"; }; f"
# IMPROVE.
imp = "!f() { git cap \"👌 IMPROVE($1): $2\"; }; f"
# UPDATE.
up = "!f() { git cap \"✍🏻 UPDATE($1): $2\"; }; f"
# FIX.
fix = "!f() { git cap \"🐞 FIX($1): $2\"; }; f"
# RELEASE.
rlz = "!f() { git cap \"🚀 RELEASE($1): $2\"; }; f"
# DOC.
doc = "!f() { git cap \"📖 DOC($1): $2\"; }; f"
# TEST.
tst = "!f() { git cap \"🤖 TEST($1): $2\"; }; f"
# BREAKING CHANGE.
brk = "!f() { git cap \"‼️ BREAKING CHANGES($1): $2\"; }; f"
# REMOVE
remove = "!f() { git cap \"🗑 REMOVE($1): $2\"; }; f"
# REFACTOR
ref = "!f() { git cap \"♻️ REFACTOR($1): $2\"; }; f"
# INITIAL COMMIT
int = "!f() { git cap \"🎉 INITIAL COMMIT($1): $2\"; }; f"

Wes McNamee • Aug 1 '20

probably a good place to share some things about this:

Here is the "conventional commit" pattern, which is super useful to be able to automatically extract information from your commits, such as for a ChangeLog.
conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/

This post has been around for a long time, and it's great!
chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/

This tool helps you write conventional commits with emoji!!! It's super cool
github.com/vivaxy/gacp?ts=4

Lars Moelleken • Aug 4 '20

You can share your git commit conventions in the team via e.g.:

add this into your "~/.gitconfig"-file

[commit]
  template = ~/.gitmessage

example: github.com/voku/dotfiles/blob/mast...

wdhowe • Aug 6 '20

We store a file in the root of each project: .gitmessage

Then in the project's Contributing section in the Readme, we have:

Before contributing to this project, configure the commit template while in the project root:

git config commit.template .gitmessage

The contents of the gitmessage is:
jira/issue-####: Title of issue
Description of changes.

We then squash all commits on merge and enforce rebasing.

This makes for a very clean commit log like:

jira/issue-2: Do that
These are more changes.

jira/issue-1: Do this
These are the changes.

Lars Moelleken • Aug 6 '20

How do you enforce rebasing?

wdhowe • Aug 6 '20

It's a setting in GitLab per project.

Settings > General > Merge Requests.
Under Merge method, select "Fast-forward merge".

Description is: "No merge commits are created. Fast-forward merges only. When conflicts arise the user is given the option to rebase."

Joshua Ballanco • Aug 7 '20

Here's the super-concise commit message template that I've been using for years now (I've lost track of which blog post or comment I first picked it up from). I find it to be a helpful reminder, without inundating me with a wall of text every time I go to commit:

# If applied, this commit will...

# Why is this change being made?

# Provide links to any relevant tickets, URLs or other resources

huncyrus • Aug 26 '20

Nice article, and also I would like to add my opinion:

do not care of "title", the commit related ticket should have it.
the commit body should be 2-3 line only, if longer, then you supposed to split the ticket into smaller tasks (SOLID).
do not include emoji, markdown or anything, just simple text. Do not forget, not everyone has the same stack and could make pain to read whatever you did
Include related ticket or tickets

Example
MYPROJ-420 Updated vendor libraries (lodash, robot, d3) for xyz page.

Kim Hallberg • Jul 30 '20 • Edited

I wish my commits were that good, I did adopt this style a while back, also tried the gitmoji style for a while but, then I reverted back to simple - Add, Create, Remove, Delete titles. 😆

Might try this style of commits again, I really like how they look and the organization of them just feels better to me, also seems better for filtering with the colon as a separator. 🔥

Chrissie • Jul 31 '20

This is just one way to do it if you have no problem understanding your commits with the way you've been using then continue using that as long as it's clear and people won't have any trouble understanding the message.

Will Vincent • Jul 31 '20

This is pretty much how I've been doing commit messages for the past couple years, since adopting conventional commits and using standard version.

The only difference is my format is like this:
[type]([scope]): [Subject].

and then the optional body, which generally only gets filled out if it's a very large commit (usually a no-no) or is filled in automatically by github on squash & merge of a PR, or if there's a breaking change.

So for example:
feat(Foo): Adds the ability to bar.

fix(Bar): Bar should not prevent Foo.

BREAKING CHANGE: Bar now requires Baz.

Standard Version ingests these commits and automatically compiles a changelog, which we use as part of our deploy process. Result is an automagic changelog created on each production deploy that definitively captures all changes since the last deploy. It's glorious... and simple once you put the pieces in place.

Will Vincent • Jul 31 '20

The benefit of the scope being included is it will group all items by scope, alphabetically, in the changelog, and prefix each of the bulletpoints with that scope value so they're easy to spot.