[rejschaap]

You get some of this for free if you create branches and squash merge them when finished. Without needing to think much about commit message, just a few words per commit is enough. This is good enough for me and I don't need to waste any time thinking about it.

Example commits of something I worked on a few days back:

  $ git l feature/character-selection

  c54825f 3 days ago   Robert Schaap   (feature/character-selection) Simplify color picker, fetch current color
  d512569 3 days ago   Robert Schaap   Fix recolor for female, clean up files
  6d05ce4 3 days ago   Robert Schaap   Add color picker to change shirt color
  441180b 3 days ago   Robert Schaap   Show male in editor
  17045dc 3 days ago   Robert Schaap   Remove old character
  95772ff 3 days ago   Robert Schaap   Add characters

Then when I squash merged it I ended up with this commit message:

  $ git show HEAD~1

  commit be50e0d701d565cebdf4f29e0c9d8030a1a8faf7
  Author: Robert Schaap
  Date:   Mon Mar 24 21:29:20 2025 +0100

    Character selection (#14)

    * Add characters

    * Remove old character

    * Show male in editor

    * Add color picker to change shirt color

    * Fix recolor for female, clean up files

    * Simplify color picker, fetch current color

[kqr]

Granted, I'm not the target audience of your commit messages, but they tell me very little about what happens.

> Add characters

I can probably tell from the code that that's what's happening. But what requirements drove these particular characters?

> Remove old character

What makes it old? How would I recognise an old character in the future?

> Show male in editor

Why did male not show before? Was there a bug or a partially implemented feature?

> Fix recolor for female, clean up files

What does it mean to "fix recolor"? And even worse, what is "clean up files"? What requirements drove this file cleaning? Why were the files unclean in the first place?

etc. Commit messages in the style of "fix X" or "add Y" or "remove Z" or "nondescript action on W" are the bane of my existence. They seem so meaningful but they don't tell me anything when I'm trying to trace why a particular bug was introduced – or whether it's even a bug in the first place.

[Cthulhu_]

Yeah I think the most important thing to think about when writing a commit message is the intent; a LOT of people use it as a "work log", describing what they did like "removing a character" or "add color picker".

But a commit message needs to describe what the commit does, when applied. A good rule of thumb - also explained on the git site [0] - is to put it in a template like "When applied, this patch will <your commit message>".

The grandparent comment is almost there though, using the right tense of "fix" instead of "fixed", the latter being in the work log form of "I fixed such and such".

[0] https://git-scm.com/docs/SubmittingPatches/2.2.3#:~:text=Des...

[ahofmann]

Yes! Please tell me _why_ the commit happened. The _what_ is in the diff, so almost no need to tell me in the commit message. Often I get commits with some LLM-generated slop in the commit message. It always looks good and always tells nothing. Commit messages like that are garbage.