This is adapted from Angular's commit convention.
Rules over how git commit messages can be formatted leads to more readable messages that are easy to follow when looking through the project history. In addition, allows to generate change log directly from git commit messages.
Messages must be matched by the following regex:
/^(revert: )?(`feat`|`fix`|build|ci|docs|style|refactor|perf|test)(\(.+\))?: .{1,50}/;
Even more examples here.
Appears under "Features" header, pencil subheader:
feat(pencil): add 'graphiteWidth' option
Appears under "Bug Fixes" header, graphite subheader, with a link to issue #28:
fix(graphite): stop graphite breaking when width < 0.1
Closes #28
Appears under "Performance Improvements" header, and under "Breaking Changes" with the breaking change explanation:
perf(pencil): remove graphiteWidth option
BREAKING CHANGE: The graphiteWidth option has been removed. The default graphite width of 10mm is always used for performance reason.
The following commit and commit 667ecc1
do not appear in the changelog if they are under the same release. If not, the revert commit appears under the "Reverts" header.
revert: feat(pencil): add 'graphiteWidth' option
This reverts commit 667ecc1654a317a13331b17617d973392f415f02.
Each commit message consists of a header, a body and a footer. The header has a special format that includes a type, a scope and a subject:
<type>(<scope>): <subject>
<BLANK LINE>
<body>
<BLANK LINE>
<footer>
The header is mandatory and the scope of the header is optional.
Any line of the commit message cannot be longer than 100 characters! This allows the message to be easier to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.
The footer should contain a closing reference to an issue if any.
If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with revert:
, followed by the header of the reverted commit. In the body it should say: This reverts commit <hash>.
, where the hash is the SHA of the commit being reverted.
Must be one of the following:
- build: Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (example scopes: gulp, broccoli, npm)
- ci: Changes to our CI configuration files and scripts (example scopes: Circle, BrowserStack, SauceLabs)
- docs: Documentation only changes
- feat: A new feature
- fix: A bug fix
- perf: A code change that improves performance
- refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
- style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
- test: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests
The scope could be anything specifying the place of the commit change. For example pencil
, graphite
etc... The scope may also be empty in some style
, test
and refactor
changes (e.g. style: add missing semicolons
) and for docs changes that are not related to a specific place (e.g. docs: fix typo in tutorial
).
The subject contains a succinct description of the change:
- use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
- don't capitalize the first letter
- no dot (.) at the end
Just as in the subject, use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes". The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.
The footer should contain any information about Breaking Changes and is also the place to reference GitHub issues that this commit Closes.
Breaking Changes should start with the word BREAKING CHANGE:
with a space or two newlines. The rest of the commit message is then used for this.