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Improve commit messages #391

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ErikBjare opened this issue Mar 24, 2020 · 6 comments · Fixed by #415
Closed
1 task done

Improve commit messages #391

ErikBjare opened this issue Mar 24, 2020 · 6 comments · Fixed by #415

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@ErikBjare
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ErikBjare commented Mar 24, 2020 •
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Since we've started auto-generating changelogs I started looking into how other projects do it and many do so by enforcing a standard format for commit messages.

One prominent standard is Conventional Commits. A few examples:

fix: fixed bug #X
docs: updated README
ci: added platform to CI

Types I propose we use are: fix, feat, build, chore, ci, docs, style, refactor, perf, test

It's important that we strike a good balance. We don't want to discourage new contributors by being nitpicky. Worst case we can always clean up the changelog manually, but having at least most commit follow the convention would make things easier.

  • Update CONTRIBUTING.md with guidelines

Related to #377

Thoughts @johan-bjareholt, @xylix?
@xylix
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xylix commented Mar 24, 2020

I'm unsure about some of the proposed types though. Most style and perf changes could go under fix/feat/refactor so they overlap quite a bit.

Otherwise looks good to me.

@ErikBjare
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I took the types from https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/22b96b9/CONTRIBUTING.md#type

  • perf: A code change that improves performance
  • style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)

@johan-bjareholt
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johan-bjareholt commented Mar 25, 2020 •
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Such a rule sounds a bit too strict in my opinion.
I love clear commit messages, but as long as each commit title is descriptive and it's clear what part of the code it impacts I think this is an non-issue.
We should instead just have a guideline of making clear commit messages and tell people to squash their commits if some of them are a fix/typo/refactoring in code which is not even merged yet, that's what I find our current issues with our commit messages are.

@ErikBjare
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As I said, I'm not enforcing any strictness, just a guideline. Prefixing commits with a type helps loads with autogenerating the changelog, and going through the commit history in general.

...and tell people to squash their commits if some of them are a fix/typo/refactoring in code which is not even merged yet, that's what I find our current issues with our commit messages are.

Agreed, I've been better at doing this myself recently, which is partly what led me to also want this.

@xylix
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xylix commented Mar 25, 2020 •
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Hm yeah being able to drop most refactor, ci and chore commits from the changelog automatically would make generating changelogs much nicer, so I agree with adding this to the guidelines and will try to follow it in the future.

@ErikBjare ErikBjare mentioned this issue Apr 19, 2020
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ErikBjare added a commit that referenced this issue Apr 19, 2020
@ErikBjare
docs: added commit message guidelines to CONTRIBUTING.md
5f3a632 
fixes #391
@ErikBjare ErikBjare mentioned this issue Apr 19, 2020
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@ErikBjare
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ErikBjare commented Apr 19, 2020 •
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@xylix Added grouping of changelog entries by type as a subtask in #377.

Submitted a PR for the CONTRIBUTING.md changes in #415

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docs: added commit message guidelines to CONTRIBUTING.md ActivityWatch/activitywatch
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@johan-bjareholt @ErikBjare @xylix