How to Write a Good Commit Message
Writing commit messages seems to be one of the things that are not really taught. As a result, unless their team actively defines and enforces a convention, developers who don't actively seek out existing conventions and advice for writing commit messages often build bad habits and either create their own "convention" or their commit messages are inconsistent or outright unhelpful. What great developers have in common is that they have good defaults that apply unless something else is explicitly specified.
A lot has been written about how to write good commit messages. We will describe 2 popular conventions and some general advice. As always, you're encouraged to do additional reading, maybe starting with the links provided at the bottom.
Further Reading
- https://raimund-kraemer.dev/2023/11/12/on-formatting-commit-messages/
- https://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html
- https://cbea.ms/git-commit/
- https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Style-of-Change-Logs.html