New git guidelines: We have switched to Conventional Commits

Giving teams as much autonomy as possible is a good idea, but having some company-wide guidelines can also help. Those guidelines will help you when people switch teams, work on multiple products, or train new colleagues.

Discuss, decide, repeat

We recently discussed some technology-related topics with all software developers at visuellverstehen. One of the outcomes of this discussion is new git guidelines. After a short debate, we have officially switched to Conventional Commits.

It is fun to see all the latest commits following a new syntax. I am curious about what we will say about this change in six or twelve months. For sure we will discuss and decide again – for the better.

New git guidelines

Below you can find the November 2022 edition of our git guidelines.

Repositories

  • Repositories should be named like this: vvcode-name_of_project

Branches

  • The main branch should be named main
  • The people working on a product decide if they want to work with further branches
  • If you need further branches, it is advisable, to add the number of the issue and a short title inside of a branch name, e. g.:
    • 100-validation-errors
    • 101-basic-search
    • 102-german-translation
    • 103-live-deployment
    • 104-url-formatting

Commits

  • We use the syntax from Conventional Commits
  • Commit messages include one of the following prefixes:
    • fix: to fix bugs
    • feat: to introduce new features
    • chore: to make general changes
    • ci: to work on continuous integration/continuous deployment
    • refactor: to improve existing source code
  • Commit messages should be written in the present form
  • Commit messages should be written in English
  • Commit messages should start with a lowercase character
  • It is advisable to add the issue number to a commit message
  • Practical examples of commit messages:
    • fix: display validation errors properly, refs #100
    • feat: implement basic search, refs #101
    • chore: add correct german translation, refs #102
    • ci: repair live deployment, refs #103
    • refactor: unify URL formatting, refs #104
  • If a commit is a work in progress, it should be marked as such:
    • fix: display validation errors properly (WIP), refs #100
    • feat: implement basic search (WIP), refs #101
    • chore: add correct german translation (WIP), refs #102
    • ci: repair live deployment (WIP), refs #103
    • refactor: unify URL formatting (WIP), refs #104

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