When there’s a limit to the size of a commit message it does make it difficult to actually list all the changes, so sometimes this is all you can write.
I know in theory you’re meant to commit little and often, but in practice it doesn’t always work out that way.
Even if you have a big commit, you can always write something more descriptive than this. And commit messages can be huge, so the limit shouldn’t be an excuse to write a useless message.
For those wondering how to exceed the 70 (80) recommended character limit and still follow best practices:
- Write the title on the first line, keep below 70 characters.
- Make two (2) newlines
- Write one or more descriptive paragraphs.
The first line will be shown as commit message, and the full text can usually be viewed by checking out the commit. Sentences can span multiple lines, but try to keep the line length below 70 characters for best readability.
This off the top of my head, so feel free to correct me if I’ve misremembered the best practices.
I generally write a single line summary and then a list of the specifics like:
Did stuff (except more detailed than that)
- The first thing I did
- Maybe some more detail about the first thing because there's a rationale to explain
- The second thing I did
- Third thing
Etc.
Commit messages of my personal projects are filled with just “fix”. Life is too short to write a proper commit message
About what my coworkers do but even worse with stuff like “save” and “fix”
Every one is using AI to make funny pictures. This is what they should be using it for. Look at my diff, generate a commit message.
If you don’t know what you’ve done within a commit, it probably shouldn’t be a single commit, with or without AI Although if you’re talking about using AI to make funny commit-messages…
Funny enough, that’s a feature of GitHub copilot: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/github-copilot#_generate-git-commit-messages
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/write-your-git-commits-with-github-copilot/
The people that do this are either inept or experts, no inbetween
just a hobbyist here, but wouldn’t this actually be a good use for AI? Just copy the code and “provide a git committ title for this code”?
