Commit Messages

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Commit Messages
Depending on your version control workflow, this can be either commit messages or pull requests.
Sample
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fix: prevent more than 12 eggs in a carton
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​
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Summary:
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Egg cartons only hold a maximum of 12 eggs. The app fataled when there are more than 12 eggs.
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​
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We shouldn't store more than 12 eggs in a carton.
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​
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We also were able to improve the algorithms to better insert eggs.
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Before: 10.7ms
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After: 7.3ms
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​
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Test Plan:
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Run unittest
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  phpunit  __tests__
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​
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http://example.com/broken-page/
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​
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Task: #1
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http://example.com/tasks/1
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Examples:
​https://fatbusinessman.com/2019/my-favourite-git-commit​
Commit Messages
Write for clarity.
Write knowing that it will be read later.
Convey intention.
Convey purpose.
The purposes of the commit message is to convey to the reviewer, or someone who has to debug or understand your code in the future, why did we have to write this diff?
Pros
Speeds up code review process.
Becomes most recent up to date documentation.
Reduces context switching to other systems.
Helps future maintainers of the repository.
Extremely helpful for people who have to read alot of code.
Aids in debugging.
Commit Message
Commit messages consist of at least three things:
One Line Summary
Summary
Test Plan
Optional (depending on project):
Task
Additional URLs
Reviewers
Reviewed By
Deployment Process
Empty Sample
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One Line Summary
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Summary:
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​
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Test Plan:
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​
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Task:
Copied!
Structure
One Line Summary
Contains succinct description of the change.
Keep this short and sweet. Less than 50 characters.
Don't make it too generic. For example: "New Unit Test" is bad because it doesn't describe what the unit test does.
Quick way to reference the diff.
Use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
No dot (.) at the end
Semantic Release
Adapted from Angular:
Types:
build: Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (example scopes: gulp, broccoli, npm)
ci: Changes to our CI configuration files and scripts (example scopes: Travis, Circle, BrowserStack, SauceLabs)
config: Changes to any configurations.
docs: Documentation only changes
feature: A new feature
fix: A bug fix
perf: A code change that improves performance
refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
revert: The summary of the commit that was reverted
style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
test: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests
typos: Fixing typos in flavor text
ux: Improvements to User Experiences (ie: changes to color)
Not to be confused with ui.
Using ux to emphasis the impact of the ui
Summary
Describe in detail:
why this diff necessary
what are the trade offs of your decisions
if its a new feature:
why do we want to add this feature
expected result of releasing the feature
if refactoring code
why are you refactoring the code
what bash commands you used to find/change the code
if its a bug fix:
what is expected to happen
what actually happened
how the bug was discovered
how long the bug was live for
what commit/diff caused the bug
how the bug was fixed
severity of the bug
people/services effected
amount of downtime
link to charts displaying severity
screenshots of severity
if there is a performance improvement
give comparison of before/after. For example:
how many milliseconds did it take before/after
how much memory does it take before/after
Test Plan
Test plans are used:
Reviewers know that you have tested throughly.
When having to understand old code, you know how to test it thoroughly.
Always try to make the test plan as easy to reproduce as possible. If a test plan is too long, this could potentially be a sign that what you are implementing is too complex.
Include:
screenshots (if its a ui change)
URIs of the pages effected
any shell commands that were executed 
any configuration changes that are needed
Additional URLs
Paste any additional relevant URLs, for example URLs to:
Asana
GitHub Wikis/Issues
Google Docs
Internal Tools
JIRA
Kabanize
Travis
Wiki Pages
This makes it easy to reference them. Try to use the canonical url when possible.
Deployment Process
How do we deploy this version of the code?
How can we monitor the deployments?
What alerts can be received?
Where can someone receive alerts?
Example
1
fix: prevent more than 12 eggs in a carton
2
​
3
Summary:
4
Egg cartons only hold a maximum of 12 eggs. The app fataled when there are more than 12 eggs.
5
​
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We shouldn't store more than 12 eggs in a carton.
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​
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We also were able to improve the algorithms to better insert eggs.
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​
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Before: 10.7ms
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After: 7.3ms
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​
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​
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Test Plan:
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​
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Run unittest
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​
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  phpunit  __tests__
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​
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http://example.com/broken-page/
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​
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Task: #1
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http://example.com/tasks/1
Copied!
Setting Default Commit Messages
Git
Update .git/config, or ~/.gitconfig file to point to your commit template.
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git config --add commit.message FILE
Copied!
Resources
​Angular Commit Message Guidelines​
​Erlang: Writing good commit messages​
​Gerrit Commit message guidelines​
​Semantic Release​
​GitHub: Awesome GitHub Issues & PRs Templates​
​GitHub: Issue and Pull Request templates​
​GitHub: Creating a pull request template for your repository​
​GitHub: Search for PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE​
​Open Source Templates​
​Kernel Newbies: Patch Philosophy​
​https://github.com/RomuloOliveira/commit-messages-guide​
​ESLint Commit Messages​
Angular
​Angular Commit Message Guidelines​
​GitHub: PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md​
Types:
build: Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (example scopes: gulp, broccoli, npm)
ci: Changes to our CI configuration files and scripts (example scopes: Travis, Circle, BrowserStack, SauceLabs)
docs: Documentation only changes
feat: A new feature
fix: A bug fix
perf: A code change that improves performance
refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
revert: The summary of the commit that was reverted
style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
test: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests
​Samples:
docs: correct grammar in CONTRIBUTING.md
fix(animations): do not delay style() values before a stagger() runs
fix(aio): build scripts-js before creating a new docker image for t
ci: add npm postinstall back to the lint step so node_modules doesn't
docs: fix spelling of case variants in naming.md
test(compiler): add a test for components not part of any NgModule
build(aio): boilerplate wont be removed by default now
fix(aio): Typo in Setup Anatomy documentation page
docs(aio): fix typo
docs(aio): animations typos fixed
refactor: remove unused imports of the deprecated Renderer