DEV Community

Discussion on: Plan Your Commits

Collapse
 
akkartik profile image
Kartik Agaram

Yeah, I remember a time when I never used to remember to commit at the right places, and I'd end up with a pile of work I had to laboriously sort through. I ended up writing a little bespoke script that helped me get into the habit of committing in the right places. Perhaps it'll help someone else. The crucial idea is to make the changelog a first-class file that I can see and interact with in my text editor alongside my code. As I bounce around my text editor, the changelog keeps popping up in front of me, making sure it's never too far from my thoughts, and encouraging me to write in it. Everytime I save the changelog, editor automation records my latest update to the changelog as a new commit message. The changelog now becomes conversational, a record of my thought process as I work through a problem.

Over time I stopped needing these training wheels, but they were very helpful for a couple of years.

More details.