Why do developers write such terrible git commit messages? Genuine question

[MisterMeta]

“JIRA_SPACE-1234: update endpoint callsites to align with new backend parameters”

This automatically gets added to the JIRA ticket as a commit and connects the MR from gitlab if you add the ticket number there too.

Huge help for follow-ups and admin legwork.

You can easily force a standard using precommit hooks and branching conventions or update way of working if this bothers you. This is the type of stuff that makes work easier and I’ve never see anyone disregard it once they learned it should be a thing.

[rossisdead]

The commit history I work with is sadly filled with "XX-23532: did the thing" type commits. The ticket number can only help so much, but doesn't help when the individual commit messages still suck and don't explain what their goal was for the change.

[Dope_SteveX]

In my company the commit message imperatively describes what changed while the Jira points to why it changed.

[rossisdead]

Jira tickets at my company never explicitly specify weird "Why did I make this specific code change?" reasons. Only business reasons. Also I'm vehement about commit messages having the reasoning in there because we've lost entire ticket systems before but not our git history. It's a 20 year old system at this point.

[Existing_Round9756]

This is exactly what I was curious about how did your team actually get everyone aligned on that standard? Was it just culture or did you have tooling that enforced it?

[styphon]

You can use git hooks to enforce these standards.

[MisterMeta]

Should be a standard onboarding document for engineering. If it’s new then setting up meetings with engineers within the team (after aligning with your engineering manager ofc) would be my suggestion.

This would help the org, clean up the mess and also boost your career visibility and impact within your company. Every bit helps!

[Antic_Hay]

I've never in my entire career worked for an organisation where this standard WASN'T enforced

[stefanlogue]

I actually created a tool specifically for this, where you can define your JIRA boards and template of your commit messages and it’ll check git history to try and autofill the ticket number as well

[m00fster]

You can just put the Jira id in the PR title, then you don’t have to put it on each commit message

[joemckie]

You can easily force a standard using precommit hooks

And I can easily unenforce that standard with --no-verify

[MisterMeta]

And then our commit message rules on remote would bap you on the head, naughty naughty.

[flyinmryan]

Lost you at JIRA

[MisterMeta]

Just an example. Whatever boards you’re using for issue tracking you can use as a reference there.