git commit -m “minor tweaks”

+3,276 -4,724

Conventional commits all the way! Even if I don’t use the keywords (feat, fix, etc.) I always write the comment in imperative tense; the message should tell you what happens if you merge it.

You get two options.

Normally it’s a squashed commit of everything in a feature, with a commit message like:

[JIRA-1234] - Descriptive but Concise Name of Feature

But every now and then it’s multiple commits like:

quick fix
Ugh, fix typo
fuck fuck why doesn’t it work
Oh, I’m stupid

My commits tend to be pretty verbose. Here's an example log from one of my projects.

I follow the standard imperative style for the commit title, and then I use the body to summarize any important internal changes, reflect on the overall project status (for example, what milestones this commit crosses or what other work it might enable or require), and state what I'm going to work on next. I'm sure some people find it too wordy, but I like having the commit history show lots of details about the overall status.

Edit: I always have a descriptive summary, i.e., never one word commits or similar.

The change written as a command

Until I get frustrated by something and just start committing "yeet"

They fluxuate wildly between short and informative messages like "fixed regex validation on property A" and "I fucking hate prettier" when the build pipeline fails because I had a line that was 2 characters too long.

I've had commits called fuck

When I eventually (usually) rebase, declarative statements of what the commit would accomplish if applied.

When I am testing CICD or generally need to push more frequently for whatever reason, it's humor and angst all the way.

Ffffffuuuuuuuuu

Pls, why

Okay yeah that was important I guess.

(⁠╯⁠°⁠□⁠°⁠）⁠╯⁠︵⁠ ⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

I try to follow the BLUF pattern: Bottom line up front. The first line is as short a description of the change ("Re-fixed a bug where a URL without a verb could crash the bot.") with some detail following ("I thought I caught that a couple of years back...")

I try to save the detail for the code itself: Comments describe what I was thinking at the time for context, the code is the code. I don't replicate the code comments in the commit message because having the same thing in two places means having to keep two things up to date, and that rarely goes well.

• "progress on [1], fixed linting [2]"
• "[1] completed, setup for [2]"
• "[3] and [4] completed"
• "fixed formatting"
• "refactoring [1] and [2]"
• "fix variable typos"
• "update logic in [2]"
• "revert package.json and regenerate package-lock"

All my commits have comments. I generally commit after completing a 'block' objective, a describe what that was but in very simple terms mostly in regards to the file/section with the most significant logic changes. I don't always specify the file if I did tiny typos/linting/annotation across a bunch of them, because the logic is unaffected I know that the differences will be visible in the commit history.

My weakness is that I don't do it often enough. If I'm working on [2] for several hours, I'll only commit when I consider it minimally-viable (completed 2), or when moving between machines ([further] progress on 2). And I have a bad habit of not pushing every time I commit, just at the end of the day or when moving between machines (though a messy rebase hopefully made that lesson stick), or if somebody else on the team wants to review an issue I'm having.

I try (my best) to follow https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/

Developer Initials - Jira ticket number which includes the project abbreviation and the ticket number - brief description:

DA - HHGTTG-42 - fix question answer format

If you need details you look in the ticket.

I always try to capture the reasoning behind why I am making the change. I wrote about this more here https://lencioni.medium.com/the-secrets-to-great-commit-messages-106fc0a92a25

I like my company's style:

For issues:

<jira ticket> - [program][deliverable] did this to fix that

Problem: symptoms of the problem that future devs can use to figure out its the same problem

Root cause: why this is broken

Solution: how I fixed it, including the scope

Testing: what testing it has it gone through

I did this thing that fixed ticket #1618

For features:

I did this thing and X feature is now implemented. This closes out work for #1618

[JIRA-123] Quick summary of objective

Justification (if applicable) Bulleted, high-level overview of important bits Any relevant test results done that won’t also be done in CI

Literally about 90% of the commits I've pushed on my DayZ server's configs and mod files are just marked 'a'. The actual mod updates I almost never have made porch notes for. Trying to be a little more informative for my new D&D based Conan Exiles server.

It still looks better than how I used to name things in flash.

Looking at the log of my solo project, I could say the formula of my commit message is Verb the Subject, the Verb being Added/Tweaked/Removed, etc., and the subject of what is being changed. As I'm using git commit -m 'Message' GNU Bash every time (none of the clients tend to work well for me + git self-hosting practice over SSH), I just try to make one-liners and without entering an external editor.

Although my professional experience is scarce. For most of the time, I've been creating but not maintaining my projects. My projects do not have a decent high-level structure, I do not test my codebase, I learn my code by heart and follow intuition. I tend to think in algorithms, rather than structural design patterns. Even for my newest project, the main.rs is bloated, the functions are not in the correct modules (a.k.a. files), the modules are improperly named. Alhough, I cannot believe in myself I am approaching 3.5K lines of code (separated over two repositories) but I can still navigate....

I try to follow https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/

For me, the need it: when production is on fire, as a responsible person, I want to be able to understand why the change of this commit has been made. Perhaps also what were the drivers of the implementation.

I also have this onliner to commit and push each 10min:

watch -n 60 'git add . ; git commit --allow-empty-message -m ""  ; git push'

But those commits would never be merge as they are to master or main. It's just if I loose work on my laptop. Worst case a git rebase HEAD~ has to be done before the PR review.

[issue number] short summary

description of main changes, bullet list if there are lots.

description of minor changes.

motivation of this change, if unclear.

Like the default Merge messages that git creates.

"Add some new feature" "Fix this and that" "Refactor XY code"

Not "Adding", "fixed", "Refactors" or anything...