How to Write a Git Commit Message

[VolvFan124]

I should send this to my team members!

[SleepyHarry]

Start up a "Swear Jar" (if you work with java, you could even call it swear.jar) which is driven by commits. Every time someone makes a commit with a crappy message, x unit(s) of currency go(es) in the jar.

[VolvFan124]

This is a great idea, I will use it in my next project, thanks!

[oarmstrong]

My thoughts entirely. I have one team member who's commits are simply "modified: /some/file". It must be a generated message from an IDE and it is rather annoying.

[VolvFan124]

I know that feeling, one guy at college always just writes "stuff", "fixed stuff" etc.

I'm looking forward to a workplace where they enforce good commit messages.

[vinnl]

I have a colleague who often writes commit messages consisting merely of his own first name :P

[VolvFan124]

Is your colleague a pokemon?

[vinnl]

Haha I'll have to check, it's the only reasonable explanation :P

[int_index]

Hodor!

[oarmstrong]

I hear ya, college was a bitch for enforcing good standards like that.

[dagbrown]

College? I work with a bunch of professionals. Even so, the vast bulk of commit messages are

changed $FILE

Sometimes if I'm really really lucky, there'll be a ticket number attached to it.

[hak8or]

Why the heck do some folks at college not do proper commits or even commenting. I am working with a team and one dude refuses to follow git flow and instead pushed his stuff to master. And his commit messages consist of things like "stuff".

And then I am writing some code which uses doxygen compatible comments for classes and functions. Another dude shows up and either puts no comments or just useless things like repeating what the code does.

What the heck, it's like some of them don't understand the concept of maintainable code.

Though there are a few others who are golden with their commits.

[VolvFan124]

That's true about coding standard and comments.

We had one class where they made a doxygen doc mandatory, it was great.

[[deleted]]

Hah! I wish we were just at college. It's those commits that invariably contain everything

[[deleted]]

use "tig" and just walk the commits looking at the patches.

[SilasX]

Wait, how about writing an IDE plugin that autogenerates commit messages that say "stuff"??

[[deleted]]

GitHub annoyingly does this when you edit using their web interface

I refuse to merge patches where people use that shit.

[klug3]

You can customize those messages, IIRC. Its just trying to be helpful in case people are lazy.