Commiting
How do I commit right?
What makes a good commit message?
- Separate subject from body with a blank line
- Limit the subject line to 50 characters
- Capitalize the subject line
- Do not end the subject line with a period
- Use the imperative mood in the subject line
- Wrap the body at 72 characters
- Use the body to explain what and why vs. how
A good example would be:
Summarize changes in around 50 characters or less
More detailed explanatory text, if necessary. Wrap it to about 72
characters or so. In some contexts, the first line is treated as the
subject of the commit and the rest of the text as the body. The
blank line separating the summary from the body is critical (unless
you omit the body entirely); various tools like `log`, `shortlog`
and `rebase` can get confused if you run the two together.
Explain the problem that this commit is solving. Focus on why you
are making this change as opposed to how (the code explains that).
Are there side effects or other unintuitive consequences of this
change? Here's the place to explain them.
Further paragraphs come after blank lines.
- Bullet points are okay, too
- Typically a hyphen or asterisk is used for the bullet, preceded
by a single space, with blank lines in between, but conventions
vary here
If you use an issue tracker, put references to them at the bottom,
like this:
Resolves: #123
See also: #456, #789Atomic commits
Each commit should express a single unit of work on a single feature. Don't bulk-commit all of the work you did today, or write your entire project in one go and then commit that all at once. Commit whole pieces of work, ideally leaving the application in a workable state.
When you need to think what happened as you are writing your commit message then you already have done to much for a single commit.
Tip: The same can also apply for pull request. Keep it short and don't try to merge 50 commits at ones, if you are working in a team.