Get Commit-ted!

Presented by: David Ayers
Innovative Technology Professional | Passionate Lifelong Learner | Giant Nerd
Full Bio
@iamagiantnerd, iamagiantnerd@gmail.com

A talk about writing commit messages, and more importantly, how to write them so that the history you are creating with your code is meaningful, and the code you submit for code reviews is more understandable.

This talk was presented at DevOps Days Dallas, 2018. Here's the video from that event: https://youtu.be/S77F53H82Xs?t=605

This talk is in the Ignite talk format, designed to be presented in 5 minutes.

This repo was used to construct the examples shown in the slides, and also contains the powerpoint used in the talk.

The code in the repo was originally from: https://github.com/in28minutes/spring-boot-examples

Talk Abstract

Commit messages are one of two things: love letters to your future self, or hate mail. The choice is up to you. In this ignite talk, we’ll quickly go through the anatomy of good commit messages, why they are important, and how to craft them yourself.

Talk Description

Most of us use some sort of version control system; if you’re doing devops-y stuff, it’s likely you are using git. Using these follows a familiar pattern: You do some work, commit the work, and push it to a remote repository, perhaps creating a Pull Request or Merge Request for review.

Here’s the thing – what you put into your commit messages matters. Those commit messages are either love letters to your future self, or hate mail. You’ve heard the maxim that code is written once and read many times, and the same goes for commit messages. Putting some thought into what you put into your commit messages (and making them readable) is important.

In this five minute ignite talk, you’ll learn the anatomy of a good commit message and how to structure your work for maximum impact to others (and yourself!) that have to ready them. We’ll also touch briefly on some commit anti-patterns.

So get commit-ted to crafting useful commit messages!

Photo Credit

All photos used in the presentation are CC0, provided by Unsplash.

Specific photo credit:

Typewriter Photo by Elijah O'Donell on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/mh0j74mGeco

Letters Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/uGcDWKN91Fs

Looking back Photo by Michael Skok on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/1tTLrL50bpA

Merge Photo by M_V on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/ZxQE-mbf9_s

Code Review Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/s4aOPAJ4v0E

Logic Photo by Tim Johnson on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/Vwf8q3RzBRE

Discipline Photo by Thao Le Hoang on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/yYSY93clr4w

Do Over Photo by Lance Grandahl on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/0mgSGdlRguQ

Love Letters Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/DNKfLthRJbI

Organized Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/cY-SXZp6TUY