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lisawolderiksen/git-commit-template.md

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Use a Git commit message template to write better commit messages
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git-commit-template.md

 Using Git Commit Message Templates to Write Better Commit Messages

One of my colleagues shared an article on writing (good) Git commit
messages today: How to Write a Git Commit Message. This excellent
article explains why good Git commit messages are important, and
explains what constitutes a good commit message. I wholeheartedly
agree with what @cbeams writes in his article. (Have you read it yet?
If not, go read it now. I'll wait.) It's sensible stuff. So I decided
to start following the seven rules he proposes.

...There's only one problem: My mind is already stuffed with things I
should do and things to remember. The chance of me remembering every
rule every time I commit something, are next to 0. So I made myself a
Git commit message template. That way, I don't have to remember the
rules, they are presented to me whenever I write a commit message. So
now, when I do git commit, this is what I see in my editor:

# Title: Summary, imperative, start upper case, don't end with a period
# No more than 50 chars. #### 50 chars is here: #

# Remember blank line between title and body.

# Body: Explain *what* and *why* (not *how*). Include task ID (Jira issue).
# Wrap at 72 chars. ################################## which is here: #

# At the end: Include Co-authored-by for all contributors.
# Include at least one empty line before it. Format:
# Co-authored-by: name <user@users.noreply.github.com>
#
# How to Write a Git Commit Message:
# https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
#
# 1.Separate subject from body with a blank line
# 2. Limit the subject line to 50 characters
# 3. Capitalize the subject line
# 4. Do not end the subject line with a period
# 5. Use the imperative mood in the subject line
# 6. Wrap the body at 72 characters
# 7. Use the body to explain what and why vs. how

# Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.
#
# On branch master
# Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
#
# Changes to be committed:
#       new file:   installation.md
#

What I see consists of two parts; first my own template, then Git's
standard message asking me to "Please enter the commit message". No
need to remember everything - or really much at all, except to not
use git commit -m "Commit message", as this means I won't see the
template I made.

 Template File

Here is my template*, which i put in a file called .gitmessage in my
home directory:

# Title: Summary, imperative, start upper case, don't end with a period
# No more than 50 chars. #### 50 chars is here: #

# Remember blank line between title and body.

# Body: Explain *what* and *why* (not *how*). Include task ID (Jira issue).
# Wrap at 72 chars. ################################## which is here: #


# At the end: Include Co-authored-by for all contributors.
# Include at least one empty line before it. Format:
# Co-authored-by: name <user@users.noreply.github.com>
#
# How to Write a Git Commit Message:
# https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
#
# 1.Separate subject from body with a blank line
# 2. Limit the subject line to 50 characters
# 3. Capitalize the subject line
# 4. Do not end the subject line with a period
# 5. Use the imperative mood in the subject line
# 6. Wrap the body at 72 characters
# 7. Use the body to explain what and why vs. how

 Git Configuration

To tell Git to use the template file (globally, not just in the
current repo), I used the following command:

git config --global commit.template ~/.gitmessage

And that's all there was to it. (Except I have my dotfiles in a repo,
so I had to do some symlinking and update one of my config-scripts to
be able to recreate this setup from scratch if I need to.)

 Links and Documentation

The Git documentation contains a chapter on Customizing Git - Git
Configuration which in turn contains a section on the commit.template
configuration value.

Better Commit Messages with a .gitmessage Template has a different
kind of template, which is an actual template: It contains text which
will become a part of the commit message.

 Footnotes

*) It may be argued that this is, strictly speaking, not a template,
as no part of it is actually used/included in the commit message. :)

@DervishD
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DervishD commented Feb 14, 2021

Hi Lisa!

First of all, thanks for the template, quite useful if you ask me,
specially when one is writing commit messages in a hurry, and
SPECIALLY when one is collaborating with other developers. Brillian 

One question, though. The markers for the 50 and 72 limits are
off-by-one (they point at 49 and 71 chars, respectively). Is this on
purpose, to accommodate newlines? Because in my experience this is
not needed, you can use the full 50/72 chars and have newlines
without problem, even though I may be utterly wrong, of course. I'm
just curious...

Again, thanks!

Sorry, something went wrong.

@lisawolderiksen
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lisawolderiksen commented Mar 22, 2021

    First of all, thanks for the template, quite useful if you ask
    me, specially when one is writing commit messages in a hurry, and
    SPECIALLY when one is collaborating with other developers.
    Brillian 

You're very welcome! I'm glad you find it useful. 

    One question, though. The markers for the 50 and 72 limits are
    off-by-one (they point at 49 and 71 chars, respectively). Is this
    on purpose, to accommodate newlines? Because in my experience
    this is not needed, you can use the full 50/72 chars and have
    newlines without problem, even though I may be utterly wrong, of
    course. I'm just curious...

No worries. I use the # to signal the last character within the 50/72
char limit. So when I type my commit message, I make sure that the
last character I write is before or at the # mark. Just my quirky way
of thinking, I guess. 

Sorry, something went wrong.

@DervishD
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DervishD commented Mar 23, 2021

Thanks a lot for the explanation. And again, for the template. Now my
only concern is that Visual Studio Code supports commit templates
with commented lines without stripping the comments, rendering them
useless. For now, I'll use your template with my ol' faithful Vim ;)

Happy coding!

Sorry, something went wrong.

@goswamia
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goswamia commented May 27, 2021

Hi,
Thanks a lot for sharing this file. But I am facing one issue, when I
am trying to commit this I always get abort error message. any input

Sorry, something went wrong.

@Paul-weqe
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Paul-weqe commented Dec 27, 2021

@goswamia I can see I am a couple of months on this. Don't know if
you ever got your answer.

If you didn't, could you look if you have any post-commit hooks
running ?

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@drjasonharrison
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drjasonharrison commented Jan 12, 2022

I think you want a space inserted between the "1." and "Separate
subject from body with a blank line"

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@manav148
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manav148 commented Jan 12, 2022 *
edited

For the procrastinators out there;

printf "# Title: Summary, imperative, start upper case, don't end with a period\n# No more than 50 chars. #### 50 chars is here: #\n\n# Remember blank line between title and body.\n\n# Body: Explain *what* and *why* (not *how*). Include task ID (Jira issue).\n# Wrap at 72 chars. ################################## which is here: #\n\n\n# At the end: Include Co-authored-by for all contributors. \n# Include at least one empty line before it. Format: \n# Co-authored-by: name <user@users.noreply.github.com>\n#\n# How to Write a Git Commit Message:\n# https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/\n#\n# 1.Separate subject from body with a blank line\n# 2. Limit the subject line to 50 characters\n# 3. Capitalize the subject line\n# 4. Do not end the subject line with a period\n# 5. Use the imperative mood in the subject line\n# 6. Wrap the body at 72 characters\n# 7. Use the body to explain what and why vs. how\n" > ~/.gitmessage && git config --global commit.template ~/.gitmessage

Edited as per @rany2 and @drjasonharrison comments

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@drjasonharrison
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drjasonharrison commented Jan 12, 2022

@manav148 echo doesn't expand \n, you should use printf. Did you test
this?

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@manav148
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manav148 commented Jan 12, 2022

Yes I used the command to setup on the mac.

Sorry, something went wrong.

@rany2
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rany2 commented Jan 12, 2022

echo does different things on different OSes and shells. Some don't
even have -e to expand backslashes. For anything advanced, use
printf. I guess what happened is that @drjasonharrison was on bash
which doesn't expand backslashes by default (needs -e) and @manav148
uses zsh which does...

For the lazies, this one should work everywhere:

printf "# Title: Summary, imperative, start upper case, don't end with a period\n# No more than 50 chars. #### 50 chars is here: #\n\n# Remember blank line between title and body.\n\n# Body: Explain *what* and *why* (not *how*). Include task ID (Jira issue).\n# Wrap at 72 chars. ################################## which is here: #\n\n\n# At the end: Include Co-authored-by for all contributors. \n# Include at least one empty line before it. Format: \n# Co-authored-by: name <user@users.noreply.github.com>\n#\n# How to Write a Git Commit Message:\n# https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/\n#\n# 1.Separate subject from body with a blank line\n# 2. Limit the subject line to 50 characters\n# 3. Capitalize the subject line\n# 4. Do not end the subject line with a period\n# 5. Use the imperative mood in the subject line\n# 6. Wrap the body at 72 characters\n# 7. Use the body to explain what and why vs. how\n" > ~/.gitmessage && git config --global commit.template ~/.gitmessage

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@ALiwoto
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ALiwoto commented Jan 12, 2022

Thanks for the template.

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