Commit message

Abstract

This document describes some my favorite techniques for commit message writing.

Ticket number in message

Almost all the time we can't write a meaningfull commit message. We usualy produce something like:

fixed config loader
improved logger unit tests`

or in the worst cases:

To make such messages more usefull - just append a ticket number to them: 1. ajr-2034: fixed config loader 2. ajr-3053: fix

Here we append all the long documentation to the ticket. So when you in trouble and don't know why some commit was made - you can just search your bugtracker for specified ticket number.

Don't duplicate information

It is useless to make messages like:

john doe: fixed logger
27 jan 2014: almost fixed config loader

In the first sample we specify a commiter name - but cvs already know it. In the second sample - date of commit. But cvs knows it too. So both messages contains garbage

Specify subsystem

We can make our messages more informative by appending system::subsystem this commit changes.

[logger::network] added udp broadcaster
[game::trading] implemented items repair

Make atomic commits

This strategy insists on a small diffs. Try not to make commits which changes 20+ files and have a diff on 1000+ lines. The worst scenario when you fix two unrelated bugs in one commit or change two unrelared features in differents subsystems. DONT:

[logger::network, game::trading] added udp broadcaster and implemented items repair