Excellent Commit Messages

$ cd our-awesome-project
$ git log
commit a87de13c60102b80e8288025fcb7951bbcedb433
Author: John Doe 
Date:   Fri Oct 20 11:08:53 2017 +0200

FOO-21311 :
- System A and B both send rockets in packs of 5, however, this becomes a problem for the truck over at Detroit which only can accept 3 at a time. I therefore changed the default size to 3.
- Fixed NPE
- Added unit tests for this

Psssst, may I suggest a few small changes to the format of the commit messages?

#0

You already did this, but for completeness sake, I'd mention that the first word of the commit message should be the bug tracker issue id so that it's easy to script listings of issues related to a given issue (and distinguish these from messages where you mention other issues).

#1

The first line of the commit message should be a short description of the commit. This line shows up in git log --oneline, in the Stash review interface, in the generated merge commits and other places (email patches++, git annotate <file>).

#2

Then follow up with an empty line. Otherwise, everything is shown in one pile, e.g. in the review interface in Stash, in the output from git log --oneline and other places.

#3

Lastly, wrap the messages on 72 or 80 characters so that it displays nicely in standard terminal windows.

Following the above recommendations, I would suggest reformatting your commit message like this:

FOO-21311 Rocket pack size now fits all ports, including Detroit.

- System A and B both send rockets in packs of 5, however, this
  becomes a problem for the truck over at Detroit which only can
  accept 3 at a time. I therefore changed the default size to 3.
- Fixed NPE
- Added unit tests for this

#4

Oh yes, one more thing. When talking about commit messages, I would also urge you when writing commit messages to focus on why you made these changes and less on the what you did. The what is in the commit diff, so saying "Changed rocket package size from 5 to 3" isn't that interesting:

- public static Integer ROCKET_PACK_SIZE = 5;
+ public static Integer ROCKET_PACK_SIZE = 3;

However, why you made that change ("The Detroit truck can only accept 3 rockets"), now that's interesting 😄

That's it,

Happy coding!