Have Gemini stage and write commit messages for you

[progbits]

Ah this again?

Commit message is not just a quick summary of what, it's also a historical record of why. Can't generate the latter from the diff.

[teeray]

Yep. You should stop and answer “why does this commit exist?” since that is the question you will be asking yourself when you discover it with `git blame` or `git bisect`. It amazes me how many devs are just willing to slap a -m on `git commit` and just say “fix bug” or “pr feedback”.

[hadat]

Thank you for the response, My target is people that are bad at writing commits, barely or don't even write commits. Also from what you arguing I've worked on alot of projects including opensource and the majority just provide a quick summary so this would be of great use. Here are some commits the bot wrote

feat: Enhance Auto-Commit Bot with new features and improvements - Reworked the description to provide a more detailed overview of the tool's capabilities. - Added badges for license and Python version. - Updated the installation instructions to include environment variable setup for the Google Gemini API key. - Implemented logging for all actions to facilitate debugging and provide a comprehensive record of events. - Included a usage example to demonstrate the workflow of the tool. - Improved the commit message generation using the Google Gemini API for increased accuracy and context.

And

feat: integrate Gemini API for commit message generation This commit introduces integration with the Gemini API to enhance the automated commit message generation process.

The following changes were made:

- Added a `CommitMessageGenerator` class to generate commit messages using the Gemini API. - Modified the `ChangeDetector` to handle the generation and staging of commit messages. - Updated the CLI to accept an API key for Gemini API access. - Added error handling for missing API keys. - Implemented tests for the `CommitMessageGenerator`.

[TrainedMonkey]

Yes, when spelunking why something has changed having good rationality would be a godsend... however let's face reality:

1. Majority of commit messages are low quality and would benefit significantly from a good summary of what was done.

2. Margin of commit messages is often too small for documenting the rationale - this job is better left for tickets.

[rcarmo]

Well, that is exactly what the code does right now: https://github.com/suwi-lanji/auto-commit/blob/40c1fc34adce5....

I would probably have it look at the files and try to generate a nice summary of “why”, but for those minor things where you add a parameter or fix whitespace I think this is OKish.

[guitheengineer]

True, but you can infer the why from what changed for a lot of cases

e.g. - Add types for X, Y Z

if the PR goal is to make types more strict, that message is clear.

I feel like the quality will be worse than if the engineer really put some thought into it, but the problem is, commits are annoying to write.

A lot of people do “wip” or do a worse than average job.

Having a summary of what changed is still better than that.

Edit: if you feed more context about what you’re trying to develop it will probably be able to infer.

[crazygringo]

I've never worked that way.

In my mind, commit messages should be a quick summary of what. The basic motivation should be clearly labeled as a feature, bugfix, etc., but that's all. Commit messages are for quick browsing and a summary of what changed, not extensive justification.

The why is too important to be put in a commit message. The product why belongs in a linked issue that describes the bug or use case in full detail. Meanwhile, the technical why's (why this particular solution as opposed to alternatives) belong in the code itself as comments.

[traveler1]

This sort of thing probably doesn't work particularly well with file auto-saving, which is almost necessary for some language servers to reprocess files to reflect "real-time" in VSCode. Aren't you also just committing half-baked work and totally menial changes?

[masto]

I tried this with a random commit from one of my projects: https://github.com/masto/LED-Marquee/commit/775d48fc0dd969de.... You can read my human-crafted message there. By comparison, what follows is the one that Gemini came up with which is A: useless, and B: wrong. I don't want to be mean, but I would put this up there as almost the perfect example of what generative AI should never be used for. It cannot read your mind, and the commit description is where you say what the intention of the change is, not summarize what it contains.

  Fix: Remove platformio.ini from .gitignore and rename platformio.ini.dist
  
  This commit removes platformio.ini from the .gitignore file and renames
  platformio.ini.dist to platformio.ini. This allows the project's PlatformIO 
  configuration to be tracked by Git and ensures consistent build settings across
  development environments. It also adds comments explaining how to configure OTA
  updates and override settings with a separate marquee.ini file.

[bravura]

Please don't jump on me:

Am I the only person in this world who is an accomplished engineer and thinks commit messages are worthless? That if I want to roll back or dissect, I do it at the PR and not individual commit level?

The need for very accurate comment messages occurs so rarely in my workflow that the value of crafting them correctly is not there.

I ask honestly: Am I missing something here? Why? Is it something peculiar to my workflow I'm missing?

[Etheryte]

In my experience, most of the value in commit messages isn't in rolling back and such, but in trying to understand history. At day job, I work on a product where some of the code is around two decades old, so you bet there's no one around who you could ask about it. Many of the problems that were solved at the time are solved for free out of the box with modern tooling, but you won't know if that's the case unless you know what problem a commit was fixing to begin with. You can read the diff, yes, but it won't tell you the why and that's what commit messages are for.

[tkzed49]

I think a lot of people here maybe haven't used a PR + squash merge flow? Because I agree with you, when I'm doing operations on git history I just see the PR title from the squash merge. Squash merge lets the PR be the atomic unit, so commit messages don't matter as much.

But if I read these comments as "I wouldn't let an AI write my PR description", I strongly agree.

[dartos]

It depends on your workflow, ofc.

If you run the kind of shop where your master branch is all merge commits, commit messages are useful.

[bamboozled]

Working in production and fixing bugs I find them totally invaluable.

[tommiegannert]

For commit messages, the world seems full of bad commit messages, and commit hygiene. Does this do anything to help improve that? What I really want is a bot that groups my changes into logical commits. I.e. I tell what kind of change I want committed, and it stages only those patches.

I noticed today that one of the big hardware stores in Switzerland has started using LLMs to generate descriptions. As expected, it's just drivel:

> Do you need a new sealing ring for your washbasin siphon? No problem. The Geberit plug-in seal is exactly what you need. With a diameter of 32/46 mm, it fits perfectly and ensures that everything is tight. It has a height of 5.5 cm and a length of 2.3 cm, making it easy to handle and quick to install. It's simply worth its weight in gold when everything fits at the first attempt and you don't have to worry about whether the quality is right. So, whenever your washbasin siphon needs a refresh, the Geberit plug-in seal with its 3.2 cm is your first choice. Simply insert and you're done.

https://www.jumbo.ch/de/bad-sanitaer/installationsmaterial/d...

[isaacremuant]

People who are "programmers by coincidence" and think that commit messages or unit tests are a chore and they just do it to satisfy orders from other devs are the first who think have the AI do it is a good idea.

There's a reason people feel TDD is hard if they don't want to think about properly modeling their problem. Reducing duplication and finding a good human computer interface with AI is great but if you just don't want to think at all, you'll just dump crap on the next guy and it's natural that you're "worried about being replaced by AI".

[toasteros]

No actually just write your own commit messages. Generally speaking, just write your own stuff.

[skywhopper]

This is a terrible idea. Do not do this.

[hadat]

The Auto-Commit Bot is a Python-based tool that automatically monitors a directory for changes, generates meaningful commit messages using the Google Gemini API, and commits the changes to a Git repository. It’s perfect for automating repetitive Git tasks and ensuring consistent commit messages.

[Etheryte]

These are not meaningful commit messages. A meaningful message says why something was done, not what files were changed. You can see what files were changed in every commit without writing it in the commit message.

[KTibow]

This doesn't let you include multiple files in a commit, right?

[deivid]

"feat: Enhance Auto-Commit Bot with new features and improvements"

It's definitely _a_ commit message. Not sure it beats "asdasd" or "do stuff" though.

[Terretta]

        def generate_commit_message(self, diff):
            """
            Generate a commit message using the Gemini API.
            """
            prompt = f"Generate a concise and meaningful Git commit message for the following changes:\n\n{diff}"
            response = self.model.generate_content(prompt)
            return response.text.strip()

and diff is just output of `git diff`. No context or comprehension of repo or treesitter to share code structure ...

OTOH, it's an open source base and one can PR to it.

[talles]

We are automating commit messages now? Is it really that much of an effort to simply phrase what you just developed and type it out?

[guitheengineer]

Cursor has this conveniently built in. I find it pretty handy, specially for wip commits

It doesn’t know the intent of the commit though, so if you change X because of Y, it will just tell that X changed, without explaining why.

Adding more context about what the ticket is about can probably solve that

[timcobb]

I haven't been able to find that in the app

[stevage]

Copilot already proposes commit messages for you, right?

[ahoka]

Example from the readme:

‘Updated file1.txt with new content.’

Huh?

[hadat]

How much more descriptive could that be?