Write Clear and Meaningful Git Commit Messages

It has been my experience that people overthink this.

I had a battle with some guy who was just trying to get me fired so that he could hire his buddies. So, he had ridiculous rules about commits. And, he made an issue of it over and over. Yet, if I fixed the company's programs so that they were not fired by big money (company is Google or other in the same ball park), then he would get very upset and get more petulant about commits more than ever.

In the end, his git commit tyrany was not even well thought out. Even so, he did get his way with me on the grounds that I did too much work and that was too much of a bother for him, even though that wasn't exactly his job. But, the druken managers did his bidding when he wrote long letters.

Don't weaponize commit message!

So, here is a problem.:

Things like github are nice micro step backup engines. Commit as often as possible in case your computer crashes - as it will.

(Here I am with a disk drive I installed after the last one fried -- and I was lucky that had done an actual backup not long before. It's about the third battery. Don't forget that for abstract math and computer software that you should know how to use a screw driver and a sodering iron. You should fix your car, too. Because, jackasses don't pay enough for your great toil writing software.)

So, write fuzzy little commit message to yourself most of the time. Write many obscure indecipherable comments for each little commit.

But, some commits are more improtant than others. They mark the point that you really want to join the rest of the world. That means your stuff should be tested. Right!? So, you mark the publishable commit. You make that searchable as possible.

All you really need is some meaningful and unique marker. And, your upstream should be nice about it. They should not be telling you how many commit messages you can have since your last merge. There should be nothing artificial in preping for the next advance.

It is poor repository management to hit someone with a detraction like, "Your commit comment should be more beautiful." Like, what! And, what vector for beautiful should we be talking about? And, if I try to make it more beautiful, will you behold the next version as such or will you just complain to mangement that I can't cut the beauty contest of commit messages?

No doubt, cures for cancer and the end of world hunger have been tossed out by control freaks who just need to boss people around with vageries over things like commit messages.

More focussed on what is being discussed here:

So, this is a nice idea, the marking of absolute purpose. It would be best if such markers were made available in github desktop or other tools. Maybe git comments could allow classification symbols. But, maybe a symbol along the lines of "I JUST DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW!" might be in the list as well. Of course, that would not be for publishable versions. But, really... It grows old really fast.

However, I am on board with the basic idea. And, I usually put in some words that indicate the degree of importance of the commit. For insance, "STUPID COMMA!" is a good one. "I THOUGHT I SAVED IT FIRST" is another. And, there are many other possibilities.

Best if a git comment analyzer actually did NLU. That might actually be a real productivity saver.

I guess my only problem with this is that if this became standard, some git commit comment tyrant will start getting tyranical over the use of these particular symbols. Usually they have their own secret ones that you can get in trouble for not using.

In the end, you should stress less over this. But, find a friendly way of communicating with each other. In the end, there may be some process outside of git that should be considered for identifying the purpose of code changes.

I am certain, however, that Linus Torvalds never intended Git to be a weapon to use against coworkers. In fact, he said he invented it because other code control systems were being used to fire people. So, we should consider his original purpose. I think that he originally intended to unseat the position of repository master, a position to which many psychopaths aspire.

Idea: Maybe there should be a scale having to do with importance. Something like, "REFACTORED" begs the question of "how much?" a lot. REFACTORED: moved three line function from module A to module B. OR like this: REFACTORED: rerouted the L.A. freeway system at 6:00 AM monday morning - no worries the basic inteface with car drives on road did not change. But, the first one might be a 0.5 and the other might be a 10, on a scale of 0 to 10.