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After seeing people use the UI to commit to git I understand where all those - sorry: shitty - commit messages come from.... (phpc.social)

submitted 4 months ago by heiglandreas@phpc.social to c/jetbrains@programming.dev

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After seeing people use the @jetbrains UI to commit to git I understand where all those - sorry: shitty - commit messages come from....

🙈

An improvement would already be to have a "Subject" line and the text box.

And have the subject line follow the Beams Rule.

Sonthat the first line of the commit message finishes the sentence

"When this commit is applied it will..."

And please: No longer than 56(?) characters (Unicode). Keep it short. You got the textbox to explain *why* in full length.

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[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It's not documentation, though. That's my point. It's a byproduct of the development cycle, not a place to store important information.

Commit messages are tied to a commit, sure, but why do you expect developers to have better discipline in writing commit messages than they have in updating code comments?

[–] heiglandreas@phpc.social 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

@BatmanAoD Because the commit message is a requirement when committing code. The code comment is sitting there and no one cares whether it'S updated.

And a certain schema of a commit message can be enforced. Git hooks for example can be used to make sure that the commit message looks a certain way, has a minimum length, is formatted according to declared standards. As one would do for code-style.

Then they still can just add garbage. But then you have a people problem that no tech will solve

[–] heiglandreas@phpc.social 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

@BatmanAoD And the commit message *is* documentation. It explains the "Why" making transparent why the code was written the way it is. If the commit message doesn'T reflect that, then you can also use git commit -m "Fixed issues"

But again: That is then a people problem that no tech will solve!

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago

My point is that "the comments aren't accurate" is also a people problem. And I absolutely disagree that commit messages are "documentation" of anything except the development history.