Commits 📜 help other people to understand what some piece of code does. If someone else on the project team 🧑💻 will continue your task, or help to finish it, or even if someone is reviewing the Pull Request 🔄, to look at commit messages may give a clue 🕵️ of the progress is done in the branch.
To write better commit messages, it is necessary to follow some guidelines 📝:
If you are working on a feature ✨ or a bugfix 🐞, each step or feature progress should produce a separate commit. By doing that you are creating an organized log 📖 of commits, which makes it easy for other developers 👩💻👨💻 to read and maintain the codebase. It also avoids the commit of large chunks of code and it is easier to glance through the commit history 🕰️.
Never commit incomplete code ❌. This goes against the concept of committing. If you are working on a large task, try to break it down to smaller assignments 📝 and ensure that each task is complete ✔️.
The most important part of a commit message is that it should be clear 🔍 and meaningful 📜.
Use the imperative tense 📣, because it represents the purpose of the code at this specific commit and it sounds like an instruction or command. A properly formed Git commit subject line should always be able to complete the following sentence: If applied, this commit will (…) 📝:
For example, use:
- “Fix issue from Home's tableView" ✅
- “Fixing issue from Home's tableView” ❌.
❗ Do not end the subject line with a period.
🧠 Do not assume the reviewer understands what the original problem was, ensure you add it, and don't think your code is self-explanatory.