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Effective commit messages simplify the code review process and aid long-term code maintenance. Unfortunately, commit messages don’t get much respect, so the world is littered with useless messages like
Fix bug
orUpdate UI
.There’s no widespread agreement about what makes a good commit message or why it’s useful, so I’m sharing my thoughts based on my 20 years of experience as a software developer.
- An example of a useful commit message
- What’s the point of a commit message?
- Organizing information in a commit message
- What should the commit message include?
- A descriptive title
- A summary of how the change impacts clients and end-users
- The motivation for the change
- Breaking changes
- External references
- Justifications for new dependencies
- Cross-references to issues or other changes
- Summaries of bugs or external references
- Testing instructions
- Testing limitations
- What you learned
- Alternative solutions you considered
- Searchable artifacts
- Screenshots or videos
- Rants and stories
- Anything you’re tempted to explain outside of the commit message
- What should the commit description leave out?
- Further reading
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