They can be bullet points, sentences, or something else it's just important that they are easy to read and understand from a cold start. I divide the body into "paragraphs," which are just loosely defined strings of text separated by white space. This is where the message body comes into play. We don't want future developers to be missing context while trying to understand the reasoning behind a change. However, in most commits, your changes might benefit from some additional context. For example, if your commit will Add a comma to the README, you probably don't have to explain yourself. In some commits, the subject line is enough to convey the entire idea. Summarize the change in less than 50 characters The first line of my commit message template looks like this: Therefore, to allow others to effectively scan and grok your subject line, you should try to summarize the entire change in fifty characters. That is because tools like GitHub truncate the line at fifty characters. Second, your commit message shouldn't be longer than fifty characters. In my experience, it also makes it easier to read long lists of one-line commits. When it comes to formatting your subject line, there are one or two rules to remember.įirst, the first character in your subject line should be capitalized this is just a common convention. That would finish my sentence nicely: "This commit will remove unused, commented code." When I write subject lines, I try to finish the sentence, "This commit will."įor example, I might write a subject line that reads something like, Remove unused, commented code. Ideally, this line summarizes the changes made in a commit. In a commit message, the first line (sometimes called a subject line) should be isolated from the body. In order to create a template for a good commit message, I'll break commit messages down into several sections. If a commit message doesn't include that information, why write one at all? Commit messages are only useful if they are useful to someone trying to understand a change at some point in the future. Git commit messages must include the what and why behind each change so that the brave git spelunkers of tomorrow can step into the headspace of a commit's author. Would it have been helpful if you found a commit message that read, fixed a bad bug? Probably not, you were probably trying to find more context about code you were working on you needed an explanation of what and why. Think about the last time you used git blame. You'll also find that many of the most useful features of git work under the assumption that commit messages are helpful. However, you'll find that the deeper you dig, the more powerful git becomes. Git is a powerful tool, even if you only use it for keeping a history of code changes and don't take advantage of its most powerful features. □ I don't care, skip to the template! □ So I'm going to share some tips on how you should use commit messages in real projects. I've found that this practice is the result of ignorance rather than laziness. Unfortunately, some people treat real projects with multiple contributors a lot like I treat my blog. I've accepted that I'll never be able to take full-advantage of git in my blog, and I'm totally fine with that. Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen modeīecause my blog's git history is only ever seen by me, that's okay.
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