To help you writing commit messages, there is a couple of guidelines, conventions and best practices one might follow. It can be summarized in 9 bullet points:
- Start with the ticket’s number the commit solves.
- Separate subject from body with a blank line
- Limit the subject line to 50 characters
- Capitalize the subject line
- Add issue reference in the subject
- 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, not how
Example
VERS-1936: Add user access to datapool table
Access rights for the datapool resource have
been edited. Access is required to work on the
new outfit recommender system. Request has been
approved by the PO.Please, note the following:
- Access right is normally granted at the dataset level.
- Due to pii data, access was granted at the table level.
Resolves: VERS-1936
See also: VERS-0107
Additional notes
When you commit, the Vim editor will be called by default. You will be then asked to prompt your commit message. The big strength of Vim is that it is installed by default on all systems.
If you don’t want to call Vim but rather use the command line, you can use the inline -m flag to write your commit message:
git commit -m "Your message at the imperative voice"
If you still want to use a text editor to fill-in the commit message, you can change the settings so it opens Visual Studio Code IDE when the git commit command is called:
git config --global core.editor "code --wait"
This requires you to have Visual Studio Code installed though.
You are now fully equipped to write the next bestseller! 📚