seven-rule-msg

Minimal, opinionated commit message validator.

Rules

All rules are inspired from Chris' post and its predecessors.

1. Separate subject from body with a blank line
2. Limit the subject line to 50 characters
3. Capitalize the subject line
4. Do not end the subject line with a period
5. Use the imperative mood in the subject line (not checked)
6. Wrap the body at 72 characters
7. Use the body to explain what and why vs. how (not checked)

Features

• No configuration required
• Beautiful output
• Read from $1
• Read from file
• Read from STDIN
• Verbose mode
• Silent mode

Comparison with other tools

Feature	seven-rule-msg	commitlint	node-commit-msg
Ability to test for seven rules	✅	✅	✅
Designed to test for seven rules	✅	❌	✅
Opinionated	✅	❌	❌
Beautiful output	✅	✅	❌
Easy installation	✅	✅	❌
Zero setup	✅	✅	❌
Does one thing (and does it well)	✅	❌	❌
Checks for imperative tense	❌ 1	⚠️ 2	⚠️ 3

¹ Programmatically checking for imperative tense is non-trivial and error-prone

² Deprecated

³ Requires separate installation of Java 8

Installation

Assuming you have npm installed,

npm install --global seven-rule-msg-cli

Usage

From CLI

See also: usage.txt.

CLI Argument

seven-rule-msg 'Fix all the stuff'

File

seven-rule-msg [--file|-f] <path-to-file>

STDIN

echo 'Fix all the stuff' | seven-rule-msg

As git hook

.git/hooks/commit-msg:

!/bin/sh

seven-rule-msg -f "$1"

Using the node.js API

import validate from 'seven-rule-msg';

const results = validate('A nice lil commit message');

validate(commitMessage: string)

• Return value: Result[]
  • Length: 7

The ith element of the returned array corresponds to the i + 1th rule.

interface Result {
    readonly rule: Rule,
    readonly type: ResultType
}

interface Rule {
    readonly message: string,
    readonly test?: (commitMessage: string) => boolean;
}

Rules without test methods are informative only. In other words, they cannot be reliably checked programmatically.

enum ResultType {
    pass = 'pass',
    fail = 'fail',
    info = 'info'
}

Badge

Here's a badge to show the world that you follow the seven rules of commit messages.

[![Commit message style](https://img.shields.io/badge/commit%20messages-seven%20rules-blue.svg)](https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit)

License

Licensed under the MIT License.