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Writing a commit message
Erik Nyquist edited this page Jul 23, 2016
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A good commit message should have two basic parts; a subject, and a description (if required). The subject is always on the first line (and only the first line), and the description is always separated from the subject with a blank line.
<Subject: brief one-liner describing your changes>
<Description: if more detail is needed, then skip a line
and put it in the description. However, if you don't think
you need it, then a one-line commit message is OK>
Additionally:
- The subject line should be no longer than 72 characters. Lines in the description should be no longer than 80 characters.
- Always use imperative mood for commit messages, as if you are commanding the code to change its behaviour; instead of saying "I added a new feature" and "I fixed the bug", say "Add a new feature" and "Fix the bug".
- Make sure your commit message contains an accurate summary of your changes (for example, "Made some improvements" is a bad commit message). If you're finding it difficult to summarise your changes in one commit message, then perhaps you should consider breaking the change up into multiple commits.