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Commit Message Style Guide

Commit Message Structure#

A commit message should consist of two distinct parts separated by a blank line: the title and an optional body. The layout looks like this:

type: subject
body

Title#

The title should consist of the type of the change and subject separated by a colon :. Title should be no longer than 50 characters.

Type#

The type is contained within the title and can be one of these types:

  • feat: a new feature
  • fix: a bug fix
  • docs: changes to documentation
  • style: formatting, missing semi colons, etc; no code change
  • refactor: refactoring production code
  • test: adding tests, refactoring test; no production code change
  • chore: updating build tasks, package manager configs, etc; no production code change

Subject#

Should begin with a capital letter and not end with a period.

Use an imperative tone to describe what a commit does, rather than what it did. For example, use change; not changed or changes.

Body#

If the changes made in a commit are complex, they should be explained in the commit body. Use the body to explain the what and why of a commit, not the how.

When writing a body, the blank line between the title and the body is required and you should limit the length of each line to no more than 72 characters.

Examples#

Without body

docs: update screenshots in the documentation

or

With body

fix: fix crash caused by new libraries 
After merging PRs #126 and #130 crashes were occurring. These crashes were because of deprecated functions. Found a solution here (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22718185) This will resolve issue #140