Effective Git Commit Messages: Your Team's Collective Memory

[ebeshero]

Writing good commit messages matters when you work on a team, or even when you're working on your own because each commit you make to your repository helps to generate a log of your activities. Think about this as you're writing your commits, and check out this helpful guide on how to write good commit messages! http://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/

This just came up in our first TEI Technical Council meeting here in Vienna--our Council chair wants us to be mindful so that we're always putting clear information in each commit message! It matters to us right now because we know we have to rewrite our instructions on how to release updates to the TEI Guidelines, and our git commit messages help us, literally, to retrace our steps! It's important on your projects, too. Think of the commit messages as contributing to your team's collective memory!

[ebeshero]

On that note, if you ever find yourself annoyed with your own commit message, before you push you can actually amend your commit using: git commit --amend . Don't use this after you've pushed (it's like revising history then--it would tangle up everyone's repo histories to amend once you've pushed).

[jonhoranic]

esc shift zz -- save from indep. text editor on mac for merge message

also see Issue #257