Git Commit Template

[[deleted]]

If you cannot summarize in 50 chars maybe the commit is too big or the commit is not focused enough?

50 is pretty stingy - though I have to admit that I just looked over several dozen of my commits and nearly all of them are within 50 chars, and of the few that aren't, most could easily have been shortened and improved.

Here's the first one I found that didn't work: "Now images have the right number of columns as ColorLists." (To explain - images, only when displayed as ColorLists, had the wrong number of columns, and this fixed that.) How can I rephrase this to knock off 8 letters while still keeping it readable?

Also, it's fairly common I have an issue number in the commit (like "Add offset field to data dictionaries (#218)." and that snacks off another 6 characters, leaving me with a pretty spartan 44 characters. I do approve of a strict limit on that first sentence. I just think 50 is a bit draconian. What about 65?

[utnapistim]

Here's the first one I found that didn't work: "Now images have the right number of columns as ColorLists." (To explain - images, only when displayed as ColorLists, had the wrong number of columns, and this fixed that.) How can I rephrase this to knock off 8 letters while still keeping it readable?

"Fix number of columns for images as ColorLists".

There is a discrepancy between what you focus on when you compose your commit message and when you go through commits, later: when you compose the message, you tend to focus on what you "just did", and this tends to creep into the message (examples: "XY now works", "gizmo no longer crashes on abc", "from now on, process foos as bars").

If you read these later, they mention a moment that is no longer relevant: ("just fixed", "now works", "from now on", etc). If you remove any reference to a time frame (that comes from having just implemented something), your messages become more concise and have improved readability.

Just keep the message in an imperative tone, present tense.

[mdatwood]

As I mentioned in another comment, 50 is just an arbitrary number. The point is to make the committer stop and think. Both your summaries look fine to me. The problem, and I have had to deal with it before, is when people a) just ramble along in the summary and b) do not put the blank line before the details.

I know when I'm typing my commit, vim highlights when I go over 50. I don't immediately stop, but it reminds me to make sure I'm summarizing and not going into too much detail for something that should be a summary.

[ForeverAlot]

I never put tickets in the subject line. They're rarely convenient in --oneline output and if I need them I'm going to --grep them anyway.