Does it return better commit messages than WhatTheCommit [1]?
Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
11–20 of 73 posts
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#12This creates precisely the kind of commit messages that I regularly scold junior developers for :)" In my opinion, commit messages should clarify the intent of WHY you changed things. I can already see WHAT you changed from the diffs. But of course, any tool can only work with the what, they cannot know that these lines are related to a bug report filed in a technically unrelated system.
In my way of working, the 'why' can go into the overall PR and the 'what' into the individual commits. Both are important - the reason for changes and a concise summary if what you've done.
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#13This creates precisely the kind of commit messages that I regularly scold junior developers for :)" In my opinion, commit messages should clarify the intent of WHY you changed things. I can already see WHAT you changed from the diffs. But of course, any tool can only work with the what, they cannot know that these lines are related to a bug report filed in a technically unrelated system.
Can you give some examples of good commit messages?
As already mentioned: It depends.
But this might be a good start: https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/#summary
We've used this as a starting point and adapted it to our needs (E.g. some simplification, defining the possible values for scope, etc.)
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#14This creates precisely the kind of commit messages that I regularly scold junior developers for :)" In my opinion, commit messages should clarify the intent of WHY you changed things. I can already see WHAT you changed from the diffs. But of course, any tool can only work with the what, they cannot know that these lines are related to a bug report filed in a technically unrelated system.
Can you give some examples of good commit messages?
A bad commit (that one of my coworkers always does) is "update file.ext". Says nothing other than the name of the file that was updated, which ends up with tons of repeat commit messages for common files and provides zero info that wasn't already included in the commit itself.
Another poor commit is a description like "adds padding". It's a little too vague and doesn't really tell you much that wasn't already apparent by looking at the change itself.
A better commit might be something more like "Add variable padding to ProductLogo component, fixing logo overflows for issue#78". It summarizes the change, the intended outcome of the change, the reason for the change and a reference to an issue all in one short sentence.
You don't have to go into overwhelming detail for every minor front end change but if you're intelligently tracking and squashing your commits writing them well can help a lot later on if you ever need to understand the context of an older commit or even a given line in the codebase.
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#15Any examples of output?
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#16This creates precisely the kind of commit messages that I regularly scold junior developers for :)" In my opinion, commit messages should clarify the intent of WHY you changed things. I can already see WHAT you changed from the diffs. But of course, any tool can only work with the what, they cannot know that these lines are related to a bug report filed in a technically unrelated system.
Why should the commit message explain why? I thought the point was to give a summary of the changes so that you don’t have to read the full diff.
Because it is very useful down the road to understand why you used implementation x and not implementation y.
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#17What a great way to feed OpenAI all your source code.
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give some examples of good commit messages?
A bad commit (that one of my coworkers always does) is "update file.ext". Says nothing other than the name of the file that was updated, which ends up with tons of repeat commit messages for common files and provides zero info that wasn't already included in the commit itself. Another poor commit is a description like "adds padding". It's a little too vague and doesn't really tell you much that wasn't already apparen…
You forgot my least favourite commit message: “fix PR comments” for a commit that changes 5 unrelated things
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#19This creates precisely the kind of commit messages that I regularly scold junior developers for :)" In my opinion, commit messages should clarify the intent of WHY you changed things. I can already see WHAT you changed from the diffs. But of course, any tool can only work with the what, they cannot know that these lines are related to a bug report filed in a technically unrelated system.
As a rule of thumb: the WHY in the PR, the WHAT in the commits.
Re: Show HN: Generate commit messages using GPT-3
#20This creates precisely the kind of commit messages that I regularly scold junior developers for :)" In my opinion, commit messages should clarify the intent of WHY you changed things. I can already see WHAT you changed from the diffs. But of course, any tool can only work with the what, they cannot know that these lines are related to a bug report filed in a technically unrelated system.
Generated commit message could explain the why, if the code changes had comments explaining this sort of thing. Someone still needs to document why changes are being made, but at least you only need to do it once. And maybe GPT-3 can do a good job of selecting the relevant info and summarizing the why of the change?