Git Conventional Commits

Tip

Also have a look at Git Conventional Commits Cheat Sheet

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

Usage

npx git-conventional-commits <command>

Commands

Tip

Add the help flag -h to any command to list all possible options.

  init [options]                               create a config file template `git-conventional-commits.yaml`
  version [options]                            determine version from conventional commits
  changelog [options]                          generate changelog from conventional commits
  commit-msg-hook [options] <commit-msg-file>  check for conventional commit message format

First use

• Run npx git-conventional-commits init
• Adjust config file git-conventional-commits.yaml to your needs

Config file

Example git-conventional-commits.yaml

---
convention:
  # commitMessageRegexPattern: ^(?<type>\w+)(?:\((?<scope>[^()]+)\))?(?<breaking>!)?:\s*(?<description>.+)
  commitTypes:
  - feat     # Commits that add, adjust or remove a feature to/of/from the API or UI
  - fix      # Commits that fix a bug of a preceded `feat` commit
  - refactor # Commits that rewrite/restructure your code, however do not change any behaviour
  - perf     # Commits that are special `refactor` commits or that improve performance
  - style    # Commits that do not affect the meaning (white-space, formatting, missing semicolons, etc.)
  - test     # Commits that add missing tests or correcting existing tests
  - build    # Commits that affect build components like build tool, ci pipeline, dependencies, project version, etc.
  - ops      # Commits that affect operational components like infrastructure, deployment, backup, recovery, etc.
  - docs     # Commits that affect documentation only
  - chore    # Miscellaneous commits e.g. modifying `.gitignore`
  - merge
  commitScopes: []
  releaseTagGlobPattern: v[0-9]*.[0-9]*.[0-9]*
changelog:
  commitTypes:
  - feat
  - fix
  - perf
  - merge
  includeInvalidCommits: true
  commitScopes: []
  commitIgnoreRegexPattern: "^WIP "
  headlines:
    feat: Features
    fix: Bug Fixes
    perf: Performance Improvements
    merge: Merges
    breakingChange: BREAKING CHANGES
  commitUrl: https://github.com/qoomon/git-conventional-commits/commit/%commit%
  commitRangeUrl: https://github.com/qoomon/git-conventional-commits/compare/%from%...%to%?diff=split
  issueRegexPattern: "#[0-9]+"
  issueUrl: https://github.com/qoomon/git-conventional-commits/issues/%issue%

• convention

  • commitMessageRegexPattern custom regex pattern for commit messages
    • the default regex pattern for the Conventional Commit format is ^(?<type>\w+)(?:\((?<scope>[^()]+)\))?(?<breaking>!)?:\s*(?<description>.+)
    • you need to prepend/append your custom parts to this pattern if you still want to keep following the Conventional Commit format
  • commitTypes an array of expected commit types
    • show warnings for unexpected types
    • if not set or empty commit type validation is disabled
    • e.g. ["feat", "fix", "docs", "style"]
  • featureCommitTypes an array of commit types that define a feature.
    • default ["feat"]
  • commitScopes an array of expected commit scopes
    • show warnings for unexpected scopes
    • if not set or empty commit scope validation is disabled
    • e.g. ["ui", "database"]
  • releaseTagGlobPattern glob pattern to filter for release tags
    • release tags must contain semantic version ([0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)
    • default *

• changelog

  • commitTypes filter commits by type
    • a subset of convention.commitTypes plus
      • merge commits
    • if not set or empty commit type filter is disabled
    • e.g. ["feat", "fix", "merge"]
  • commitScopes filter commits by scopes
    • a subset of convention.commitScopes
    • if not set or empty commit scope filter is disabled
    • e.g. ["ui"]
  • includeInvalidCommits include commits without valid type: default: true
    • if set to false all commits with undefined commitTypes will be removed from changelog
  • commitIgnoreRegexPattern filter commits by commit subject regex
    • default ^WIP
  • headlines a map of headline identifier and actual headline
    • a subset of changelog.commitTypes plus
      • breakingChange Breaking Changes Section
    • e.g. { "feat": "Features", "fix": "Bug Fixes", "breakingChange": "BREAKING CHANGES"}
    • default { "feat": "Features", "fix": "Bug Fixes", "merge": "Merges", "breakingChange": "BREAKING CHANGES"}
  • commitUrl a URL template for generating Markdown links to repository commits
    • %commit% commit hash placeholder
    • eg https://github.com/qoomon/git-conventional-commits/commit/%commit%
    • if not set or empty link generation is disabled
  • issueUrl a URL template for generating Markdown links to an issue tracker
    • %issue% issue id placeholder
    • eg https://jira.example.org/browse/%issue%
    • if not set or empty link generation is disabled
  • issueRegexPattern regex pattern to find issue IDs
    • e.g. Jira issue pattern [A-Z]{3,}-\\d+

Automatically validate commit message convention before commit

To automatically validate commit messages, a git hook can be used in the commit-msg stage. The hook can be created either manually or using the pre-commit framework.

Setup with the pre-commit framework

• Create .pre-commit-config.yaml file in the root directory of your repository with following content.

  repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/qoomon/git-conventional-commits
    rev: <RELEASE_TAG>
    hooks:
      - id: conventional-commits

• Install the pre-commit framework pip install pre-commit
• Install the commit-msg hook pre-commit install -t commit-msg

Setup manually

• Set up a commit message hook to
  • Navigate to your repository directory cd <repository-path>
  • Create git hook directory mkdir .git-hooks
  • Set update hooksPath git config core.hooksPath .git-hooks
  • Create commit message hook script and make it executable
    • touch .git-hooks/commit-msg && chmod +x .git-hooks/commit-msg
    • Open .git-hooks/commit-msg with your favorite editor and paste following script

      #!/bin/sh
      
      # fix for windows systems
      PATH="/c/Program Files/nodejs:$HOME/AppData/Roaming/npm/:$PATH"
      
      npx git-conventional-commits commit-msg-hook "$1"

  • Add and commit .git-hooks/commit-msg to repository

Important

Whenever you clone your repository with git hooks you need to enable git hooks once again
git config core.hooksPath .git-hooks

Tip

You can document types/scopes inline via YAML comments, and they will show up in the hook error output.

Tag discovery

• The latest release tag is found via git describe --tags --match=<glob> --no-abbrev, using the releaseTagGlobPattern.
• Pre-release tags are excluded automatically by adding --exclude=<glob>-*
• If HEAD points exactly at the last release tag commit, it will look for the previous release tag (HEAD~1).

Versioning rules

Note

A breaking change is defined by a commit message that contains ! in the subject, or BREAKING CHANGE/BREAKING CHANGES in the body. A feature is defined by a commit message that contains one of the featureCommitTypes (by default: [feat]). Anything else will become a patch version update.

Commit type	Current version	Version change
Breaking change	0.y.z	minor (0.y+1.z)
Breaking change	x.y.z (x >=1)	major (x+1.y.z)
Feature	any	minor (x.y+1.z)
Anything else	any	patch (x.y.z+1)

Release workflow with git-conventional-commits

• Determine version by npx git-conventional-commits version
• Update version in project files
  • Commit version bump git commit -am'build(release): bump project version to <version>'
• Generate changelog by npx git-conventional-commits changelog --release <version> --file 'CHANGELOG.md'
  • Commit changelog git commit -am'docs(release): create <version> changelog entry'
• Tag commit with version git tag -a -m'build(release): <version>' '<version-prefix><version>'
• Push all changes git push
• Build and upload artifacts

Integration with existing repository

If you have a large existing repo with no release tags e.g. v1.0.0, or if you want the first changelog to be tidy, you need to create a release tag first.

• Create a release tag for a specific commit git tag -a -m'build(release): 0.0.0' 'v0.0.0'
• Push tag git push origin v0.0.0 This way npx git-conventional-commits will only consider commits based on the commit the release tag is pointing at.

---

Projects using git-conventional-commits

• https://github.com/Blazity/next-enterprise

---

Build/Release

• npm install
• npm test
• npm login
• npm publish