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Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

sumnerevans.com

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Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#171
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commit messages are good release notes rarely.

You can have a writer re-write them into acceptable release notes. It gives them a good and accurate starting point.

Closed issues are a better starting point in my experience.

Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way we did it when we used JIRA. For GH issues you can always navigate back to the PR discussion (which should have linked issues and other pointers in it) from the commit. Of course when we switched to GH issues, we largely abandoned JIRA and years later the instance got turned off and deleted. Now all those JIRA tags are entirely useless. IMO that actually argues for tight coupling between your issue tr…

> we largely abandoned JIRA and years later the instance got turned off and deleted Sorry to be nitpicky, but why did you abandon a tool that contained a lot of valuable knowledge? That's not the fault of GH nor JIRA, that's your fault. At least you'd back up descriptions + comments from these JIRA sources.

The team that makes the decision to change issue management systems and not to back up the data is rarely the team most affected by that decision.

Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#173
I personally like it for one of my work projects. Its the only one we use it on. Its a repo with the android and iOS app. I like the conventional commits because when doing releases, I can look between two tags and pick out what I need to put in the "What's new in this release" section. I try to not just do the normal, "bug fixes and various improvements," in that section, but what we actually did. Also helping make clear what went into a release branch/what needs to be cherry picked into a release branch. I also don't automate the generation of the "Whats new" section. I just take a look at all the commits between tags.

We also tend to do something like

bug-ios:

feat-android:

So we don't have generic stuff like

bug-ios: fix memory issue

Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#175

As programmers I feel like we'll always nitpick and bitch over what the optimal setup is for rather mundane things (tabs v spaces, yada yada). I'm not saying that conventional commits are God's given best way to structure a commit message, but they are a defined structure , and I find it much more effective and important that some expectations be set around commit messages, and I think conventional commits are as goo…

> Douglas Crawford

Crockford.

Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#176

As programmers I feel like we'll always nitpick and bitch over what the optimal setup is for rather mundane things (tabs v spaces, yada yada). I'm not saying that conventional commits are God's given best way to structure a commit message, but they are a defined structure , and I find it much more effective and important that some expectations be set around commit messages, and I think conventional commits are as goo…

Some programmers prefer 2 spaces, some programmers prefer 4, why don't we compromise and pick a number between 2 and 4?

Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#177

As programmers I feel like we'll always nitpick and bitch over what the optimal setup is for rather mundane things (tabs v spaces, yada yada). I'm not saying that conventional commits are God's given best way to structure a commit message, but they are a defined structure , and I find it much more effective and important that some expectations be set around commit messages, and I think conventional commits are as goo…

I don't need a standard for this. This is just noise. There are some people who have some sort of mental ailment that makes them obsessively want to introduce "structure" "scheme" "patterns" where it is just innately nonsense. You do you, but stop trying to force it on people. Reminds me of the "scrum master" adjacent folks who could never cut it writing code and then branched into all kinds of things like "Git Flow"…

Reminds me of a place I worked at where a "naming committee" had to approve variable names. And no, you could not use "i" as an index in a one-line loop.

Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#178

The real takeaway is that different projects have different requirements. In over 30 years of using source control, I've never once worked on something where it's useful to include the component (article calls it scope) in the description in a standardised way. It's obvious what components are affected based on where in the source tree the affected files are. Similarly "bug", "fix" or "feature" adds no useful value.…

Exactly. The commit message is supposed to be for the future developer, not to generate changelog.

And the main case when that developer reads the commit message is when he doesn't understand _why_ that commit exists. Not what it changes, but what is the purpose of certain lines. So he runs "blame", sees commits, the original developers are not with the company anymore, the old JIRA may not exist too, and the only hint is the commit message.

https://dev.to/splix/the-why-behind-the-code-2bb1

Re: Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things

#179
post #176

As programmers I feel like we'll always nitpick and bitch over what the optimal setup is for rather mundane things (tabs v spaces, yada yada). I'm not saying that conventional commits are God's given best way to structure a commit message, but they are a defined structure , and I find it much more effective and important that some expectations be set around commit messages, and I think conventional commits are as goo…

Some programmers prefer 2 spaces, some programmers prefer 4, why don't we compromise and pick a number between 2 and 4?

hence tabs. just configure your display for the width you like.

though I do wish more editors had some kind of "ignore the spacing, display it semantically like [this]" and just let you insert whatever you wanted, converted to whatever is nearby, and didn't touch lines you didn't create. there's no reason to even have the debate or care about inconsistencies, you can essentially always* convert between them losslessly in terms of behavior.

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