Just use What The Commit.
You can also create a git alias:
git config --global alias.yolo ‘!git add -A && git commit -m “$(curl --silent --fail https://whatthecommit.com/index.txt)”’
Now you can just type ‘git yolo’ to create a commit!
Thanks for that, I’ve been laughing like a little kid:
“hoo boy”
“lol”
“Become a programmer, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.”
I can feel those so well! :')
“Make Sure You Are Square With Your God Before Trying To Merge This”
Well such an informative reply! Thanks mate 👍
Every time I commit I have to look through
git diff, figure out what the hell I actually did, come up with something intelligent to say about jt, possibly split the commit into multiple commits if I changed multiple things, do some shuffling withgit resetandgit add…For some reason all my personal projects are all like 4K SLoC with 50 total commits, all of which include apologies for not doing more smaller commits
There’s a bigger issue than your commit message if you don’t even know what you just coded and are committing.
You see, sometimes I code something, go to bed before finishing it, come back, decide not to commit because then I’d have to think of a commit message and I just want to code, start working on an unrelated feature, do that for a couple days, get distracted by life stuff and put the project down for a few weeks/months, rinse and repeat, and then I finally get around to writing a commit message because I’m about to start a huge change and I want a restore point and I’m like. Okay, it’s been like 3 months since my last commit, I’m pretty sure my code can now do something it couldn’t 3 months ago but come on, I can’t even remember what I had for lunch last Thursday
I’m well aware this is terrible practice but I don’t know how to stop doing it
Commit more often. Maybe work in a different feature branch, and don’t be afraid to commit your half-working crappy code. If it’s a personal project/fork, it’s totally acceptable to commit often with bad commit names and small unfinished changes: you can always amend/squash the commits later. That’s how I tend to work: create a new branch, work on the feature, rebase and merge (fast forward, no merge commit). Also, maybe don’t jump around working on random features :P
You can help yourself a lot here by making commits every time you make a meaningful change. A feature doesn’t need to be complete to commit major checkpoints along the path to completion. That’s what feature branches are for. Commit often. It’ll help you think of messages, and it’ll help you recover in the case of catastrophe.
I just get too excited about actually implementing/fixing something (random things that I see along the way) more than commit ceremony (nobody will care about it in my project anyway other than one random guy who gave the repo a star)
Nah, I’m that guy, I gave your repo a star for the effort, but I’m not reading your history.
You should not use
-m, you should write commit body!Why? My coworkers are barely literate and won’t read anything with more than 4 or 5 words, writing a commit body would be a waste of time.
Nah, most commits don’t need a body
do
git commit -vand then just summarize the diff you have in your editor in a human readable form.Don’t just summarize the content though, summarize the rationale or how things connect. I can read your diff myself to see what changed, I want to know the logical connections, the reason you did X and not Y, etc.
Or just say “stuff” and provide that context in the PR description separately, no need to overdo the commit log on a feature branch if you’re using squash merges from your PR.
P1000x this.
I can read a diff.
I need to know why.
No, a code comment isn’t good enough, it’s out of date after the next commit.
Code comments for "why"s that persist. Commits for why’s that are temporary.
If you need to run X before Y, add a comment. If you added X before why because it was easier, leave it in a commit
If you need to run X before Y…
Add a test that asserts that.
I’m using Copilot for it right now. It works on half of the cases.
Psst,
git add -pWhat does this?
“patch mode” - Patch mode allows you to stage parts of a changed file, instead of the entire file. This allows you to make concise, well-crafted commits that make for an easier to read history.
Highly recommend throwing
--patchon any git commands you’re used to using. You will have the prettiest, most atomic fkn commit, I’m serious people will love you for it.I mean many people won’t care, but the quality folk will notice and approve.
We make a singular commit per feature.
I always find this hard to follow personally.
Or just use a good IDE that makes doing atomic commits pretty natural.
[conventional commits] (https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/) will save you.
or maybe commitizen if you’d like not to write them by hand.
and maybe commit and tag version, which will create changelogs for you of you follow semver“Fix”
‘Change’ if I’m feeling particularly chaotic.
git commit -m $(date)
Oh god I feel so called out. I wish I paid more attention to my commit messages but I’m usually too busy fixing the directory structure and refactoring. Sigh.
My company collapses into a single commit at merge so idgaf what the commit message is anymore. Though I would prefer not collapsing them.
