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Discussion on: How to Write Useful Commit Messages (My Commit Message Template)

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Paweł Kowalski

I love how people in 2019 still repeat the 72 characters limit mantra like they were developing kernel under Linus supervision using terminal from 1984.

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emptyother

He said 50 this time.. Our terminals are shrinking. 😱

72 is good for the subject line as a guideline. It shouldn't be enforced in any way. I prefer git clients that just give me a warning when I cross it.

How about the commit body? I've seen some people do manual word wrapping/line breaks there, and some git clients warn when I don't. Any reason to do manual word wrapping?

And markdown syntax in the commit message body, yay or nay?

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Jacob Herrington (he/him)

I prefer 50 for the subject line specifically because that's when GitHub starts to truncate.

I have my line wrapping done automatically, though.

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pavelloz profile image
Paweł Kowalski • Edited

Do whatever works and doesnt get in the way in your team.

Thats my recommendation. ;)

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Jacob Herrington (he/him)

Obviously, it's preference, I like it though.