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This post is a good intro to conventional commits, but I guess I don't agree that this is a "standard" -- it's popular, but I'd say less than 20% of git projects overall use conventional commits.
Just remember to look at what the typical commit looks like in a project before committing and try to follow suit. For smaller fun projects you might run into gitmoji, for corporate projects a ticket Id + summary style is common, etc.
Cool! I use this one for a few of my projects, I also wrote a tool that simplifies it called glitter, it allows you to scaffold a commit message very simply, here is a link: github.com/Milo123459/glitter - thanks, and this is quite a helpful post for a few of my friends getting into git and version management!
Glitter is awesome.. Good efforts
Also, I am glad that it will help your friends:)
Haha, thank you!
What can give me your glitter in compare with commitizen which I am using right now?
Oh, the type of message is customisabe. For example,
$1: $2: $3+
If you give the arguments:
hello world how are you
It'd be:
hello: world: how are you
Etc, you can change it to however you like, I don't think CZ can do that.
As far as I see, there isn't much of a difference. I'm working on interactivity for it (and that is no easy feat!) but yea, not much to change. I think the only big difference is the custom sub-command / scripts feature.
Commit formats are a lot like linting rules. Some can be very strict, some can be very freeform.
The lesson here is that no matter what format you use, people can still have terrible commit messages.
fix(stuff): updates
is a valid conventional commit format, but a useless commit message.While conventional commit formats can help with breaking up commits (doc commits should be separate from style commits), it's important to try to keep commits atomic and transactional.
Heh, you forgot the most important part, the actual message! (and no, the subject isn't it, most of the time anyway).
The message is what you'll look at in six months time to figure out why you did something.
If I need to inform people about good commit messages I usually just point them to the Linux kernel.
What's the benefit?
I mean I can see the immediate benefit - but if I was trying to figure out why a change was made I would probably need more than perf or fix; the link back to the original ticket would be more useful.
Yeah.... I didn't mention this practical use case in my article.
People can actually link their JIRA Ticket and that would be more useful.
Rightly said!!
One cool way to commit is to use emojis. I used emojis as my own types of commits. Check this out.
gist.github.com/minhnguyen0712/178...
I think this convention is nice for open-source projects but requires a lot of discipline to keep the commits atomic.
On an enterprise level where there is a task tracking system, I prefer to follow standard of `TASK-ID: ...' as most of the git ui softwares can link the tickets in project management tool.
Both works great in general but sometimes I really like to dig deeper to see the reasoning behind a change.
Hey,
Thank you for this cool post. I learn new stuff.
So, I have a question, and It will be beneficial for me if you answer it.
I'm new to the git commit message. Here is the scenario,
"Suppose I create a new Car Class file and wrote the code inside that file. Now I want to commit this class file. "
The question is in the git commit message which type is it? (refactor or other). If possible, give an example.
Thank you for your generous answer.
Note: If I make any mistake in English, please forgive me.
Hey
I think you shouldn't use refactor
As you are creating new Car Class from scratch. I believe that it will add some feature to your application.
As a result you can use "feat:"
OR
If you feel that "feat:" is not the exact match then you can decide your own
<type>
and start using it.For Example:
EsLint have decided there own
<type>
for commit message. So it's totally upto you or organization you work for.Refer ESLint:
You can see below
<type>
which are used by ESLint at eslint.org/docs/developer-guide/co...Thank you for your insightful information. I really appreciate it. 😊
I would add this article to the list.
chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
I found it very clear about how to write a good commit message. In this commit format, the rules described could be applied to the "subject".
Why? I get why having a pattern helps to read the structure, but why the convention on adds, vs add vs Add for example? It also limits for those that want to work differently, for example add a feature and style changes in the same commit.
Well, one point is to remove the "work differently" part. =)
Same as why having code convention. You can argue that it limit those who prefer new line before the
{
but that is also exactly the point. You can express personality in your editor by changing font, using dark mode or whatever, but you shouldn't really do it in code or commit messages.adds vs add
You describe the commit, not "what you have done". Just as documentation of a function is what the function does, if called.
The commit is chang*ing* the behaviour of your program, it resolves a bug or adds a feature. You can consider the list of
git log
as a list of events (or functions) that build your code base.Nice post. I have a follow up question and Im interested in how its done in different companies.
Suppose you have a big feature that involves infra change, refactoring, new dependency and new styles, basically a big cocktail of the commits that are all connected. Normally some wld commit to a branch then do a PR, but in this situation since these all commits serve a single feature the commits will get squashed into one commit before its merged to the main branch. I guess the squashed commit will use the proper convention message that you described, but those individual commits dont matter, unless your company enforces PR review per commit? I know that some big companies wld even enforce a commit per each function/block/file and each commit requires a PR review. But these PR reviews are so quick bcz they are on small commits.
What other practices ppl have used/dealt with, and which ones do ppl prefer?
feat or breaking, but theses kind of changes should be taken seriously when writing the commit message, I've sometimes used commit messages (from the squash) inside the message of the actual feat commit.
like
We actually developed a release system following conventional commits that actually analyse the type contained in commits since the last deployment. It would affect semver in different ways such as feat types would bump minor versions, fixes would bump patch versions and breaking changes would bump major versions. We also use commitlint in order to enforce the conventional commits standard.
For those who are using keyboard maestro (keyboardmaestro.com),
you can automate enter these 'types' from selection popup, (can select multiple types by CMD key)
Have added the macro in this KM forum
forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/macro-...
If you interested , can download the macro there.
Thanks for sharing, didn't see it in a list for quite a while. As documentation should relate 1:1 to code, I don't think "docs" should be a type. What about a bug in the docs? What about business rules changing? Use-case changing and the commit is about implementing it? Docs should go as there should hardly be any code change without doc-change and vice versa. Also feature looks a lot better than feat.
Thanks again for sharing, it is an important subject.
Already read a few posts about this topic and it's very common to find some misunderstanding with the "style" type.
For some conventions "style" type stands for "Formatting, missing semi colons, etc; no code change", which makes more sense to me. This kind of changes doesn't fit into any of the other types (it's not refactor, or a feature or chore). In the other hand, style and layout changes for example can fit in "feat" type, in my opinion.
Which type of this convention do you choose for code styling changes?
If you are using Jet Brains IDEs for development, you can use the following plugin to create commit messages according to this convention easily. Check it out
plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9861-...
Thank you for the article.
A quick suggestion, you need to change this link
https://github.com/eslint/eslint/commits/master
tohttps://github.com/eslint/eslint/commits/main
. Otherwise it's giving 404.simple, straightforward and very practical. Thanks for sharing.
can i write a post in portuguese, making due reference to yours?
Yes go ahead.. Thank You
it's alive
dev.to/wanderleyfa/git-commit-uma-...
Thank You
Thanks for putting this all in one place! I can NEVER remember the conventionalcommits.com site.
This link should also be helpful: conventionalcommits.org
I'm following the same guidelines but read from this page karma-runner.github.io/5.2/dev/git...
It looks pretty cool and I see how this may come in handy.
Yes I am using Commitizen for creating of this type git messages. :)
It gets even better when you combine it with semantic-release!
Nice article, i already used this, but i never read about
It's helpful to me, thank you for this!
This tool makes doing this very simple: itnext.io/writing-better-commits-6...
what about type: WIP for Work in progress. Do anyone use it like me?
Thanks. I'd seen this list before but no explanation.
I have a question , IS it possible to have multiple types in a single commit message
its a good practice to have atomic commits. Commit as small as a change can be labeled. Later you can git squash them in one big commit having release tag or feature tag
Yes, a good way of forcing better commits to only allow one scope.
That should make the commits composite instead of atomic, which we maybe want to avoid.
i prefer to use Gitmoji to prefix my commit message
gitmoji.dev
is this a real used "convention" in general or just another new thing?
I had been using this style at my job before we moved to BitBucket. We're using
$JIRA-ID $JIRA-TITLE
now. And I've seen many public GitHub repos following this (feat(scope): message
) convention.I have read this before from Conventional Git commits website, but you have broken it down better for me, thank you!
Git-cz
Just use github.com/conventional-changelog/...
I want to add "revert".
I like most of this, but should not unit tests come along with the code (in the same commit)? I would also prefer "feature" over "feat".