Conventional commit messages

• coding
• git

I recently tried out using conventional commit messages for git.

The basic structure of a commit message should be

<type>[optional scope]: <description>

[optional body]

[optional footer(s)]

For the type only feat and fix are hard definitions. Other types with definitions include

• feat – a new feature is introduced with the changes
• fix – a bug fix has occurred
• chore – changes that do not relate to a fix or feature and don’t modify src or test files (for example updating dependencies)
• refactor – refactored code that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
• docs – updates to documentation such as a the README or other markdown files
• style – changes that do not affect the meaning of the code, likely related to code formatting such as white-space, missing semi-colons, and so on.
• test – including new or correcting previous tests
• perf – performance improvements
• ci – continuous integration related
• build – changes that affect the build system or external dependencies
• revert – reverts a previous commit

There are some conventions if you use an automatic versioning tool:

• adding a BREAKING_CHANGE or appending a ! after the type/scope bumps the MAJOR version.
• any feat commit increases the MINOR version
• any other commit type only the PATCH number.