Commit message format¶

Git commit messages should consists of a one-line title, followed by an empty line, followed by the message body:

title

first line of body
second line of body
third line of body

This makes the message most expressive and comprehensible, while also supporting many git functions and graphical clients that treat the first line differently than the rest of the message. A more complete example:

docs: Make the example in CONTRIBUTING imperative and concrete

Without this patch applied the example commit message in the CONTRIBUTING
document is not a concrete example. This is a problem because the
contributor is left to imagine what the commit message should look like
based on a description rather than an example. This patch fixes the
problem by making the example concrete and imperative.

The first line is a real life imperative statement which optionally identifies
the component being changed. The body describes the behavior without the patch,
why this is a problem, and how the patch fixes the problem when applied.

Title¶

Message titles should have the following form:

component: sub-component: short description of changes

Great titles are short (70 characters or less), so as to fit in one line in most constrained circumstances.

The short description of changes should clearly and concisely state what the commit does, rather than describing the previous state or new functionality, e.g. fix bug in X instead of there is a bug in X, and add X to settings dialog instead of settings dialog can do X.

A good example of a title is:

sc class library: ClassBrowser: fix search with empty query string

Look at previous commits in the repository for inspiration.

Body¶

The message body should describe the changes in details, and explain motivations behind them. The body is not always needed if the changes are few, and the title explains them enough.

The body should have manual line breaks at around 70 character.