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Git PR & Commit Message Principles

The following guidelines for Git PRs and commit messages are put in place to make it easy to follow the developments in the various Git branches. We would like to have a concise and consistent commit history so that it becomes an effective tool for communication between developers. The principles large follow the Git commit message rules. For inspiration have a look at the Spring Boot project. The same principles apply for PRs as for commits.

Principles

  1. Limit the subject line (title) to 50 characters: Ensure that the subject is informative, short and concise and fits within the GitHub commit history for easy browsing.

  2. Start the message with a prefix: Start with a prefix in lower-case followed by colon. Try to use one of the following prefixes: feat: , fix:, chore:, ci:, docs:, refactor:, perf:, test:.

  3. Refer to Jira issue: Include a reference to a Jira issue as often as possible in the subject or body of the commit message. Specify the issue ID in brackets, e.g. like this: [DHIS2-6299].

  4. Capitalize the subject line (title): Write proper English and being all subject lines with a capital letter. For example use "Introduced performance boost option", not "introduced performance boost option".

  5. Do not end the subject line with a period: Trailing punctuation is unnecessary in subject lines and space is precious when limiting the subject line length.

  6. Use the imperative mood in the subject line: Imperative means as if giving a command. Start the subject lines with a verb. Examples: "Add spacecraft launch module", "Refactor JSONB user type".

  7. Use the body (description) to explain what and why: Use git commit message bodies to communicate what you are doing and why. This is very helpful to other developers to stay up to date on developments in master.

  8. Avoid generic messages: Avoid using generic commit messages like "Minor fix" and "Clean-up", rather explain what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Prefix overview

The table below shows availabe prefixes and their purpose.

Prefix Purpose
feat: New feature
fix: Bug fix
chore: Clean-up and maintenance
ci: Change related to continuous integration
docs: Documentation such as Javadoc
refactor: Code refactor
perf: Performance improvement
test: Unit or integration test

Example commit messages

Some example commit messages are listed below.

feat: Add new endpoint for static images [DHIS2-7656]

fix: Expire user sessions at password change [DHIS2-7355]

chore: Clean up code for attribute value service