Git tips - Hives/acebook-business-logic GitHub Wiki

Writing good commit messages

Good article here: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/

Here's the tl;dr version:

  1. Separate subject from body with a blank line
  2. Limit the subject line to 50 characters
  3. Capitalize the subject line
  4. Do not end the subject line with a period
  5. Use the imperative mood in the subject line
  6. Wrap the body at 72 characters
  7. Use the body to explain what and why vs. how

For example:

Summarize changes in around 50 characters or less

More detailed explanatory text, if necessary. Wrap it to about 72
characters or so. In some contexts, the first line is treated as the
subject of the commit and the rest of the text as the body. The
blank line separating the summary from the body is critical (unless
you omit the body entirely); various tools like `log`, `shortlog`
and `rebase` can get confused if you run the two together.

Explain the problem that this commit is solving. Focus on why you
are making this change as opposed to how (the code explains that).
Are there side effects or other unintuitive consequences of this
change? Here's the place to explain them.

Further paragraphs come after blank lines.

 - Bullet points are okay, too

 - Typically a hyphen or asterisk is used for the bullet, preceded
   by a single space, with blank lines in between, but conventions
   vary here

If you use an issue tracker, put references to them at the bottom,
like this:

Resolves: #123
See also: #456, #789

Your team mates will love you if you write commit messages like this!

I (Paul) write my commit messages in Vim which somehow magically formats everything to the right line length, but there are other options which will be more user friendly - there are IDE plugins that help you format your commit messages, or other command line editors which are easier to use than Vi/Vim, e.g. Nano.

Branch naming conventions

Looks like there's no generally agreed convention for naming branches, but there's an interesting discussion here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/273695/what-are-some-examples-of-commonly-used-practices-for-naming-git-branches/6065944#6065944

I've copy and pasted some of the top answer:

  1. Use grouping tokens (words) at the beginning of your branch names.
  2. Define and use short lead tokens to differentiate branches in a way that is meaningful to your workflow.
  3. Use slashes to separate parts of your branch names.
  4. Do not use bare numbers as leading parts.
  5. Avoid long descriptive names for long-lived branches.

Group tokens

Use "grouping" tokens in front of your branch names.

group1/foo
group2/foo
group1/bar
group2/bar
group3/bar
group1/baz

The groups can be named whatever you like to match your workflow. I like to use short nouns for mine. Read on for more clarity.

Short well-defined tokens

Choose short tokens so they do not add too much noise to every one of your branch names. I use these:

wip       Works in progress; stuff I know won't be finished soon
feat      Feature I'm adding or expanding
bug       Bug fix or experiment
junk      Throwaway branch created to experiment