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Git Lint

Git Lint is a command line interface for linting Git commits by ensuring you maintain a clean, easy to read, debuggable, and maintainable project history. Having a consistent commit history leads to improved code reviews and is a perfect companion to tools like Milestoner for versioning and producing automated release notes of your deploys.

Table of Contents

Features

  • Enforces a Git Rebase Workflow.

  • Enforces a clean and consistent Git commit history.

  • Supports Git default branch configuration.

  • Provides a customizable suite of analyzers.

  • Provides Git Hook support for local use.

  • Provides Continuous Integration (CI) support.

Requirements

Setup

To install with security, run:

# 💡 Skip this line if you already have the public certificate installed.
gem cert --add <(curl --compressed --location https://alchemists.io/gems.pem)
gem install git-lint --trust-policy HighSecurity

To install without security, run:

gem install git-lint

Usage

Command Line Interface (CLI)

From the command line, type: git-lint --help

Usage

To check if your Git commit history is clean, run: git-lint analyze --branch. It will exit with a failure if at least one issue with error severity is detected.

This gem does not check commits on your default branch (i.e. main). This is intentional as you would, generally, not want to rewrite or fix commits on the main branch. This gem is best used on feature branches as it automatically detects all commits made since creation of the feature branch.

Here is an example workflow, using gem defaults with issues detected:

cd example
git checkout -b test
touch text.txt
git add --all .
git commit --message "This is a bogus commit message that is also terribly long and will word wrap"
git-lint analyze --branch

Output:

Running Git Lint...

83dbad531d84a184e55cbb38c5b2a4e5fa5bcaee (Brooke Kuhlmann, 0 seconds ago): This is a bogus commit message that is also terribly long and will word wrap.
  Commit Body Presence Warning. Use minimum of 1 line (non-empty).
  Commit Subject Length Error. Use 72 characters or less.
  Commit Subject Prefix Error. Use: /Fixed/, /Added/, /Updated/, /Removed/, /Refactored/.
  Commit Subject Suffix Error. Avoid: /\./, /\?/, /\!/.

1 commit inspected. 4 issues detected (1 warning, 3 errors).

Configuration

This gem can be configured via a global configuration:

$HOME/.config/git-lint/configuration.yml

It can also be configured via XDG environment variables. The default configuration is:

commits:
  author:
    capitalization:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    email:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    name:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      minimum: 2
  body:
    bullet_capitalization:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - "\\-"
        - "\\*"
    bullet_delimiter:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - "\\-"
        - "\\*"
    bullet_only:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - "\\-"
        - "\\*"
    leading_line:
      enabled: true
      severity: warn
    line_length:
      enabled: false
      severity: error
      maximum: 72
    paragraph_capitalization:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    phrase:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      excludes:
        - "absolutely"
        - "actually"
        - "all intents and purposes"
        - "along the lines"
        - "at this moment in time"
        - "basically"
        - "blacklist"
        - "each and every one"
        - "everyone knows"
        - "fact of the matter"
        - "furthermore"
        - "however"
        - "in due course"
        - "in the end"
        - "last but not least"
        - "matter of fact"
        - "obviously"
        - "of course"
        - "really"
        - "simply"
        - "things being equal"
        - "whitelist"
        - "would like to"
        - "\\beasy\\b"
        - "\\bjust\\b"
        - "\\bquite\\b"
        - "as\\sfar\\sas\\s.+\\sconcerned"
        - "of\\sthe\\s(fact|opinion)\\sthat"
    presence:
      enabled: true
      severity: warn
      minimum: 1
    tracker_shorthand:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      excludes:
        - "(f|F)ix(es|ed)?\\s\\#\\d+"
        - "(c|C)lose(s|d)?\\s\\#\\d+"
        - "(r|R)esolve(s|d)?\\s\\#\\d+"
    word_repeat:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
  signature:
    enabled: false
    severity: error
    includes:
      - Good
  subject:
    length:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      maximum: 72
    prefix:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      delimiter: " "
      includes:
        - Fixed
        - Added
        - Updated
        - Removed
        - Refactored
    suffix:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      excludes:
        - "\\."
        - "\\?"
        - "\\!"
    word_repeat:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
  trailer:
    collaborator_capitalization:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    collaborator_email:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    collaborator_key:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    collaborator_name:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      minimum: 2
    duplicate:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    format_key:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    format_value:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - asciidoc
        - markdown
    issue_key:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    issue_value:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - "[\\w-]+"
    milestone_key:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    milestone_value:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - major
        - minor
        - patch
    order:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    reviewer_key:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    reviewer_value:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - clickup
        - github
        - jira
        - linear
        - shortcut
        - tana
    signer_capitalization:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    signer_email:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    signer_key:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    signer_name:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      minimum: 2
    tracker_key:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
    tracker_value:
      enabled: true
      severity: error
      includes:
        - "[\\w\\-\\s]+"

Enablement

By default, most analyzers are enabled. Accepted values are true or false. If you wish to disable a analyzer, set it to false.

Severity

By default, most analyzers are set to error severity. If you wish to reduce the severity level of a analyzer, you can set it to warn instead. Here are the accepted values and what each means:

  • warn: Will count as an issue and display a warning but will not cause the program/build to fail. Use this if you want to display issues as reminders or cautionary warnings.

  • error: Will count as an issue, display error output, and cause the program/build to fail. Use this setting if you want to ensure bad commits are prevented.

Regular Expressions

Some analyzers support include or exclude lists. These lists can consist of strings, regular expressions, or a combination thereof. Regardless of your choice, all lists are automatically converted to regular expression for use by the analyzers. This means a string like "example" becomes /example/ and a regular expression of "\\AExample."` becomes `/\AExample./.

If you need help constructing complex regular expressions for these lists, try launching an IRB session and using Regexp.new or Regexp.escape to experiment with the types of words/phrases you want to turn into regular expressions. For purposes of the YAML configuration, these need to be expressed as strings with special characters escaped properly for internal conversion to a regular expression.

Analyzers

The following details the various analyzers provided by this gem to ensure a high standard of commits for your project.

Commit Author Capitalization

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures author name is properly capitalized. Example:

# Disallowed
jayne cobb
dr. simon tam

# Allowed
Jayne Cobb
Dr. Simon Tam

Commit Author Email

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures author email address exists. Git requires an author email when you use it for the first time too. This takes it a step further to ensure the email address loosely resembles an email address.

# Disallowed
mudder_man

# Allowed
jayne@serenity.com

Commit Author Name

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

minimum: 2

Ensures author name consists of, at least, a first and last name. Example:

# Disallowed
Kaylee

# Allowed
Kaywinnet Lee Frye

Commit Body Bullet Capitalization

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: ["\\*", "\\-"]

Ensures commit body bullet lines are capitalized. Example:

# Disallowed
- an example bullet.

# Allowed
* An ASCII Doc bullet.
* link:https://demo.com[Demo]
* link:https://demo.com[demo]
- A Markdown bullet.
- [Demo](https://demo.com)
- [demo](https://demo.com)

In general, using ASCII Doc or Markdown syntax directly after a bullet will cause capitalization checks to be ignored because there can be valid reasons for wanting to avoid capitalization in those situations.

Commit Body Bullet Delimiter

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: ["\\*", "\\-"]

Ensures commit body bullets are delimited by a space. Example:

# Disallowed
-An example bullet.

# Allowed
- An example bullet.

Commit Body Bullet Only

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: ["\\*", "\\-"]

Ensures a single bullet is never used when a paragraph could be used instead. Example:

# Disallowed

- Pellentque morbi-trist sentus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor
  quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget, tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu_libero sit amet quam.

# Allowed

Pellentque morbi-trist sentus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor
quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget, tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu_libero sit amet quam.

Commit Body Leading Line

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures there is a leading, empty line, between the commit subject and body. Generally, this isn’t an issue but sometimes the Git CLI can be misused or a misconfigured Git editor will smash the subject line and start of the body as one run-on paragraph. Example:

# Disallowed

Curabitur eleifend wisi iaculis ipsum.
Pellentque morbi-trist sentus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor
quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget, tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu_libero sit amet quam
egestas semper. Aenean ultricies mi vitae est. Mauris placerat's eleifend leo. Quisque et sapien
ullamcorper pharetra. Vestibulum erat wisi, condimentum sed, commodo vitae, orn si amt wit.

# Allowed

Curabitur eleifend wisi iaculis ipsum.

Pellentque morbi-trist sentus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor
quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget, tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu_libero sit amet quam
egestas semper. Aenean ultricies mi vitae est. Mauris placerat's eleifend leo. Quisque et sapien
ullamcorper pharetra. Vestibulum erat wisi, condimentum sed, commodo vitae, orn si amt wit.

Commit Body Line Length

Enabled Severity Defaults

false

error

maximum: 72

Ensures each line of the commit body doesn’t extend beyond the maximum column limit.

Commit Body Paragraph Capitalization

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures each paragraph of the commit body is capitalized. Example:

# Disallowed
curabitur eleifend wisi iaculis ipsum.

# Allowed
Curabitur eleifend wisi iaculis ipsum.

ASCII Doc and Markdown code blocks are ignored since a paragraph that only consists of a code block is common practice. For ASCII Doc, this includes the following to be separate paragraphs if desired:

Commit Body Phrase

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

excludes: (see configuration)

Ensures non-descriptive words/phrases are avoided in order to keep commit message bodies informative and specific. The exclude list is case insensitive. Detection of excluded words/phrases is case insensitive as well. Example:

# Disallowed

Obviously, the existing implementation was too simple for my tastes. Of course, this couldn't be
allowed. Everyone knows the correct way to implement this code is to do just what I've added in
this commit. Easy!

# Allowed

Necessary to fix due to a bug detected in production. The included implementation fixes the bug
and provides the missing spec to ensure this doesn't happen again.

Commit Body Presence

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

warn

minimum: 1

Ensures a minimum number of lines are present within the commit body. Lines with empty characters (i.e. whitespace, carriage returns, etc.) are considered to be empty.

Automatically ignores fixup! commits as they are not meant to have bodies.

Commit Body Tracker Shorthand

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

excludes: (see configuration)

Ensures commit body doesn’t use issue tracker shorthand. The exclude list defaults to GitHub Issues but can be customized for any issue tracker.

There are several reasons for excluding issue tracker links from commit bodies:

  1. Not all issue trackers preserve issues (meaning they can be deleted). This makes make reading historic commits harder to understand why the change was made when the reference no longer works.

  2. When disconnected from the internet or working on a laggy connection, it’s hard to understand why a commit was made when all you have is a shorthand issue reference with no supporting context.

  3. During the course of a repository’s life, issue trackers can be replaced (rare but does happen). If the old issue tracker service is no longer in use, none of the commit body shorthand will be of any relevance.

Instead of using tracker shorthand syntax, take the time to write a short summary as to why the commit was made. Doing this will make it easier to understand why the commit was made, keeps the commit self-contained, and makes learning about/debugging the commit faster.

Commit Body Word Repeat

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures commit bodies don’t contain repeated words. Example:

# Disallowed
Necessary to to fix production error.

# Allowed
Necessary to fix production error.

Commit Signature

Enabled Severity Defaults

false

error

includes: ["Good"]

Ensures all commit signatures are properly signed for improved security and validity of code being committed by various authors. By default, only "Good" signatures are allowed but you can expand this list if desired (although not recommended for security reasons). Valid options are:

  • Bad (B)

  • Error (E)

  • Good (G)

  • None (N)

  • Revoked (R)

  • Unknown (U)

  • Expired (X)

  • Expired Key (Y)

All of the above obtained when using the pretty formats as provided by Git Log.

Commit Subject Length

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

maximum: 72

Ensures the commit subject length is no more than 72 characters in length. This default is more lenient than the 50/72 rule as it gives one the ability to formulate a more descriptive subject line without being too wordy or suffer being word wrapped.

Automatically ignores fixup! or squash! commit prefixes when calculating subject length.

Commit Subject Prefix

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: (see below)

delimiter: " "

Ensures each commit subject uses consistent prefixes that explain what is being committed. The includes are case sensitive and default to the following prefixes:

  • Fixed - Identifies what was fixed. The commit should be as small as possible and consist of changes to implementation and spec only. In some cases this might be a single line change. The important point is the change is applied to existing code which corrects behavior that wasn’t properly implemented earlier.

  • Removed - Identifies what was removed. The commit should be as small as possible and consist only of removed lines/files from the existing implementation. This might also mean breaking changes requiring the publishing of a major version release in the future.

  • Added - Identifies what was added. The commit should be as small as possible and consist of implementation and spec. Otherwise, it might be a change to an existing file which adds new behavior.

  • Updated - Identifies what was updated. The commit should be as small as possible and not add or fix existing behavior. This can sometimes be a grey area but is typically reserved for updates to documentation, code comments, dependencies, etc.

  • Refactored - Identifies what was refactored. Refactoring is for changing code structure without changing observable behavior. The commit should be as small as possible and not mix multiple kinds of changes at once. Refactored code should never break existing implementation behavior or corresponding specs because, if that happens, then one of the other four prefixes is what you want to use instead.

In practice, it is quite rare to need a prefix other than what has been detailed above to explain what is being committed. These prefixes are not only short and easy to remember but also have the added benefit of categorizing the commits for building release notes, change logs, etc. This becomes handy when coupled with another tool, Milestoner, for producing consistent project milestones and Git tag histories. For a deeper dive on subject prefixes and good commit messages in general, please read about commit anatomy to learn more. 🎉

Each prefix is delimited by a space which is the default setting but can be customized if desired. Whatever you choose for a delimiter will not affect Git’s special bang prefixes as described in the tip below.

💡 This analyzer automatically ignores amend!, fixup!, or squash! commit prefixes when used as a Git Hook in order to not disturb interactive rebase workflows.

Commit Subject Suffix

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

excludes: ["\\!", "\\.", "\\?"]

Ensures commit subjects are suffixed consistently. The exclude list is case sensitive and prevents the use of punctuation. This is handy when coupled with a tool, like Milestoner, which automates project milestone releases.

Commit Subject Word Repeat

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures commit subjects don’t contain repeated words. Example:

# Disallowed
Added specs specs

# Allowed
Added specs

Commit Trailer Collaborator Capitalization

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures collaborator name is properly capitalized. Example:

# Disallowed
shepherd derrial book

# Allowed
Shepherd Derrial Book

Commit Trailer Collaborator Email

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures collaborator email address is valid for commit trailer.

# Disallowed
Co-authored-by: River Tam <invalid>

# Allowed
Co-authored-by: River Tam <river@firefly.com>

Commit Trailer Collaborator Key

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures collaborator trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
co-authored-by: River Tam <river@firefly.com>

# Allowed
Co-authored-by: River Tam <river@firefly.com>

Commit Trailer Collaborator Name

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

minimum: 2

Ensures collaborator name consists of, at least, a first and last name. Example:

# Disallowed
Co-authored-by: River <river@firefly.com>

# Allowed
Co-authored-by: River Tam <river@firefly.com>

Commit Trailer Duplicate

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

minimum: 2

Ensures commit trailer keys are not duplicated. Example:

# Disallowed
Co-authored-by: Shepherd Derrial Book <shepherd@firefly.com>
Co-authored-by: Shepherd Derrial Book <shepherd@firefly.com>

# Allowed
Co-authored-by: Malcolm Reynolds <malcolm@firefly.com>
Co-authored-by: Shepherd Derrial Book <shepherd@firefly.com>

Commit Trailer Format Key

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures format trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
format: markdown

# Allowed
Format: markdown

Commit Trailer Format Value

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: ["asciidoc", "markdown"]

Ensures format trailer value is a valid value.

# Disallowed
Format: plain

# Allowed
Format: asciidoc

Commit Trailer Issue Key

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures issue trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
issue: 123

# Allowed
Issue: 123

Commit Trailer Issue Value

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: ["[\\w-]+"]

Ensures issue trailer value is correct format.

# Disallowed
Issue: 123+45

# Allowed
Issue: 123

Commit Trailer Milestone Key

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures milestone trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
milestone: patch

# Allowed
Milestone: patch

Commit Trailer Milestone Value

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: [major, minor, patch]

Ensures milestone trailer value is correct format for semantic versioning purposes.

# Disallowed
Milestone: bogus

# Allowed
Milestone: patch

Commit Trailer Order

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures milestone trailers are alphabetically sorted.

# Disallowed
Issue: 123
Milestone: patch
Format: asciidoc

# Allowed
Format: asciidoc
Issue: 123
Milestone: patch

Commit Trailer Reviewer Key

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures reviewer trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
reviewer: tana

# Allowed
Reviewer: tana

Commit Trailer Reviewer Value

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: [clickup, github, jira, linear, shortcut, tana]

Ensures reviewer trailer value is correct format for linking/referencing the code review system.

# Disallowed
Reviewer: bogus

# Allowed
Reviewer: tana

Commit Trailer Signer Capitalization

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures commit signer trailer name is properly capitalized.

# Disallowed
Signed-off-by: jayne cobb

# Allowed
Signed-off-by: Jayne Cobb

Commit Trailer Signer Email

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

none

Ensures commit signer trailer email is properly capitalized.

# Disallowed
Signed-off-by: Jayne Cobb <invalid>

# Allowed
Signed-off-by: Jayne Cobb <jcobb@firefly.com>

Commit Trailer Signer Key

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures signer trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
signed-off-by: Jayne Cobb

# Allowed
Signed-off-by: Jayne Cobb

Commit Trailer Signer Name

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

minimum: 2

Ensures signer name consists of, at least, a first and last name.

# Disallowed
Signed-off-by: Jayne

# Allowed
Signed-off-by: Jayne Cobb

Commit Trailer Tracker Key

Enabled Severity

true

error

Ensures tracker trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
tracker: linear

# Allowed
Tracker: linear

Commit Trailer Tracker Value

Enabled Severity Defaults

true

error

includes: ["[\\w\\-\\s]+"]

Ensures tracker trailer key is correct format.

# Disallowed
Tracker: *ACME$

# Allowed
Tracker: ACME Issues

Git

Default Branch

Your default branch configuration is respected no matter if it is set globally or locally. If the default branch is not set then Git Lint will fall back to master for backwards compatibility. When the next major version is released, the default branch fallback will change from master to main. You can set your default branch at any time by running the following from the command line:

git config --add init.defaultBranch main

💡 When setting your default branch, ensure you use a consistent Git configuration across all of your environments.

Hooks

This gem supports Git Hooks.

It is highly recommended you manage Git Hooks as global scripts as it’ll reduce project maintenance costs for you. To configure global Git Hooks, add the following to your $HOME/.gitconfig:

[core]
  hooksPath = ~/.git_template/hooks

Then you can customize Git Hooks for all of your projects. Check out these examples.

If a global configuration is not desired, you can add Git Hooks at a per project level by editing any of the scripts within the .git/hooks directory of the repository.

Commit Message

The commit-msg hook — which is the best way to use this gem as a Git Hook — is provided as a --hook option. Usage:

git-lint --hook PATH

As shown above, the --hook command accepts a file path (i.e. .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG) which is provided to you by Git within the .git/hooks/commit-msg script. Here is a working example of what that script might look like:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

set -o nounset
set -o errexit
set -o pipefail
IFS=$'\n\t'

if ! command -v git-lint > /dev/null; then
   printf "%s\n" "[git]: Git Lint not found. To install, run: gem install git-lint."
   exit 1
fi

git-lint --hook "${BASH_ARGV[0]}"

Whenever you attempt to add a commit, Git Lint will check your commit for issues prior to saving it.

Post Commit

The post-commit hook is possible via the analyze command. Usage:

git-lint analyze --commit SHA

The post-commit hook can be used multiple ways but, generally, you’ll want to check the last commit made. Here is a working example which can be used as a .git/hooks/post-commit script:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

set -o nounset
set -o errexit
set -o pipefail
IFS=$'\n\t'

if ! command -v git-lint > /dev/null; then
   printf "%s\n" "[git]: Git Lint not found. To install, run: gem install git-lint."
   exit 1
fi

git-lint analyze --commit $(git log --pretty=format:%H -1)

Whenever a commit has been saved, this script will run Git Lint to check for issues.

Rake

You can add Rake support by adding the following to your Rakefile:

begin
  require "git/lint/rake/register"
rescue LoadError => error
  puts error.message
end

Git::Lint::Rake::Register.call

Once required and registered, the following tasks will be available (i.e. bundle exec rake -T):

rake git_lint

Continuous Integration (CI)

This gem automatically configures itself for known CI build servers (see below for details). If you have a build server that is not listed, please log an issue or provide an implementation with support.

Calculation of commits is done by analyzing all feature branch commits ahead of the default branch (i.e. "main"). In other words, git log --oneline main..your_feature_branch.

Circle CI

Detection and configuration happens automatically by checking the CIRCLECI environment variable. No additional setup required!

GitHub Actions

Detection happens automatically by checking the GITHUB_ACTIONS environment variable as supplied by the GitHub environment. The only configuration required is to add a .github/workflows/git_lint.yml to your repository with the following contents:

name: Git Lint

on: pull_request

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: ruby:latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          ref: ${{github.head_ref}}
      - name: Install
        run: gem install git-lint
      - name: Analyze
        run: git-lint --analyze

The above will ensure Git Lint runs as an additional check on each Pull Request.

Netlify CI

Detection and configuration happens automatically by checking the NETLIFY environment variable. No additional setup required!

Style Guide

In addition to what is described above and automated for you, the following style guide is also worth considering:

General

  • Use a Git Rebase Workflow instead of a Git Merge Workflow.

  • Use git commit --amend when fixing a previous commit, addressing code review feedback, etc.

  • Use git commit --fixup when fixing an earlier commit, addressing code review feedback, etc., and don’t need to modify the original commit message.

  • Use git commit --squash when fixing an earlier commit, addressing code review feedback, etc., and want to combine multiple commit messages into a single commit message. Avoid using squash to blindly combine multiple commit messages without editing them into a single, coherent message.

  • Use git rebase --interactive when cleaning up commit history, order, messages, etc. This should be done prior to submitting a code review or when code review feedback has been addressed and you are ready to rebase onto main.

  • Use git push --force-with-lease instead of git push --force when pushing changes after an interactive rebasing session.

  • Avoid checking in development-specific configuration files (add to .gitignore instead).

  • Avoid checking in sensitive information (i.e. security keys, passphrases, etc).

  • Avoid "WIP" (a.k.a. "Work in Progress") commits and/or code review labels. Be confident with your code and colleagues' time. Use branches, stashes, etc. instead — share a link to a feature branch diff if you have questions/concerns during development.

  • Avoid using Git Submodules. This practice leads to complicated project cloning, deployments, maintenance, etc. Use separate repositories to better organize and split out this work. Sophisticated package managers, like Bundler, exist to manage these dependencies better than what multiple Git Submodules can accomplish.

  • Avoid using Git LFS for tracking binary artifacts/resources. These files are not meant for version control and lead to large repositories that are time consuming to clone/deploy. Use storage managers like Git Annex, Amazon S3, or LakeFS which are better suited for binary assets that don’t change often.

Security

Ensure signed commits, pushes, and tags are enabled within your global Git Configuration to reduce an attack vector. Run the following commands to enable:

git config --global commit.gpgSign true
git config --global push.gpgSign true
git config --global tag.gpgSign true

⚠️ GitHub, unfortunately, doesn’t support signed pushes so you might need to leave that configuration disabled.

Commits

  • Use a commit subject that explains what is being committed.

  • Use a commit message body that explains why the commit is necessary. Additional considerations:

    • If the commit has a dependency to the previous commit or is a precursor to the commit that will follow, make sure to explain that.

    • Include links to dependent projects, stories, etc. if available.

  • Use small, atomic commits:

    • Easier to review and provide feedback.

    • Easier to review implementation and corresponding tests.

    • Easier to document with detailed subjects (especially when grouped together in a pull request).

    • Easier to reword, edit, squash, fix, or drop when interactively rebasing.

    • Easier to combine together versus tearing apart a larger commit into smaller commits.

  • Use logically ordered commits:

    • Each commit should tell a story and be a logical building block to the next commit.

    • Each commit should, ideally, be the implementation plus corresponding test. Avoid committing changes that are a jumble of mixed ideas as they are hard to decipher and a huge insult not only to the reviewer but your future self.

    • Each commit, when reviewed in order, should be able to explain how the feature or bug fix was completed and implemented properly.

  • Keep refactored code separate from behavioral changes. This makes the review process easier because you don’t have to sift through all the line and format changes to figure out what is new or changed.

Branches

  • Use feature branches for new work.

  • Maintain branches by rebasing upon main on a regular basis.

Tags

  • Use tags to denote milestones/releases:

    • Makes it easier to record milestones and capture associated release notes.

    • Makes it easier to compare differences between versions.

    • Provides a starting point for debugging production issues (if any).

Rebases

  • Avoid rebasing a shared branch. If you must do this, clear communication should be used to warn those ahead of time, ensure that all of their work is checked in, and that their local branch is deleted first.

Hooks

  • Use hooks to augment and automate your personal workflow such as checking code quality, detecting forgotten debug statements, etc.

  • Use hooks globally rather than locally per project. Doing this applies the same functionality across all projects automatically, reduces maintenance per project, and provides consistency across all projects. This can best be managed via your Dotfiles.

  • Avoid forcing global or local project hooks as a team-wide mandate. Hooks are a personal tool much like editors or other tools one choose to do their work. For team consistency, use a continuous integration build server instead.

Code Reviews

For an in depth look at how to conduct code reviews, please read my article on this subject to learn more.

Development

To contribute, run:

git clone https://github.com/bkuhlmann/git-lint
cd git-lint
bin/setup

You can also use the IRB console for direct access to all objects:

bin/console

Tests

To test, run:

bin/rake

Credits

About

A command line interface for linting Git commits.

alchemists.io/projects/git-lint

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Readme

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