Every Commit A Sentence: Git Commit Messages for Bloggers

If you look at the changelog for my site, Brennan.day, you'll notice two things. First, I am working on this project way too much, and second, my attempt at good git commit message hygiene. There is a problem, though. Across over a thousand commits, 448 were prefixed feat: and 417 were fix:. Nearly the same count, for wildly different kinds of work. A new 2,000-word essay? feat:. A corrected typo? fix:. An automated comment sync running at 3am? feat:. A CI pipeline toggle? feat:. Everything is flattened into two buckets. I have been following what you might loosely call "best practices" for commit messages, but using conventions designed for software library authors is, at the end of the day, a writing practice of its own. I was losing meaningful signal in the process. If you're a writer (or maybe you just call yourself a blogger) first and a developer second, using git as a way to maintain your writing more than anything else, then this blog post is for you. A Brief History of the…

Commenting on Bubbles has been removed. Why? If you want to talk about this post, write to the author, use the comments on their blog if it has them, or reply with a "RE:" post on your own blog. Suggestions? feedback@bubbles.town