docs: add commit message guidelines

Closes #683
filecoin-project · Jun 5, 2019 · 595b0dd · 595b0dd
1 parent bcb3126
commit 595b0dd
Showing 1 changed file with 103 additions and 5 deletions.
diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Contributing
 
-Welcome, it is great that you found your way here. In order to make the best of all our time, we have gathered some notes 
+Welcome, it is great that you found your way here. In order to make the best of all our time, we have gathered some notes
 below which we think can be helpful when contributing to this project.
 
 ## Getting Started
@@ -22,13 +22,15 @@ Please start by reviewing this file.
 ## General Guidelines
 - PRs require code owner approval to merge.
 - Please scope PRs to areas in which you have expertise. This code is still close to research.
+- Please follow our commit guideline described below.
 - Welcome contribution areas might include:
   - SNARKs
   - Proof-of-replication
   - Rust improvements
   - Optimizations
   - Documentation (expertise would require careful reading of the code)
-
+
+
 ## PR Merge Policy (Git topology)
 
 ### Allowed (white list)
@@ -41,7 +43,7 @@ Please start by reviewing this file.
  - Merge commits whose internal history contains merge commits (except in rare circumstances).
  - Multiple fast-forward merge commits for a single PR.
  - Internal junk commits — (e.g. strings of WIP).
- 
+
 ### In Practice
  - In general, please rebase PRs before merging.
  - To avoid having approvals dismissed by rebasing, authors may instead choose to:
@@ -52,7 +54,7 @@ If automated conflict resolution is not possible, you will need to rebase and se
 
 ## Resources for learning Rust
 
-- Beginners 
+- Beginners
   - [The Rust Book](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/)
   - [Rust Playground](https://play.rust-lang.org/)
   - [Rust Docs](https://doc.rust-lang.org/)
@@ -63,6 +65,102 @@ If automated conflict resolution is not possible, you will need to rebase and se
   - How to safely write unsafe Rust: [The Rustonomicon](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/)
   - Did someone say macros? [The Little Book of Rust Macros](https://danielkeep.github.io/tlborm/book/index.html)
 
+
+## Commit Message Guidelines
+
+We have very precise rules over how our git commit messages can be formatted. This leads to **more
+readable messages** that are easy to follow when looking through the **project history**. But also,
+we use the git commit messages to **generate the change log programmatically**.
+
+### Commit Message Format
+
+Each commit message consists of a **header**, a **body** and a **footer**.  The header has a special
+format that includes a **type**, a **scope** and a **subject**:
+
+```
+<type>(<scope>): <subject>
+<BLANK LINE>
+<body>
+<BLANK LINE>
+<footer>
+```
+
+The **header** is mandatory and the **scope** of the header is optional.
+
+Any line of the commit message cannot be longer 100 characters! This allows the message to be easier
+to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.
+
+The footer should contain a [closing reference to an issue](https://help.github.com/articles/closing-issues-via-commit-messages/) if any.
+
+Samples: (even more [samples](https://github.com/filecoin-project/rust-fil-proofs/commits/master))
+
+```
+docs(changelog): update changelog to beta.5
+```
+```
+fix(release): need to depend on latest rxjs and zone.js
+The version in our package.json gets copied to the one we publish, and users need the latest of these.
+```
+
+### Revert
+If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with `revert: `, followed by the header of the reverted commit. In the body it should say: `This reverts commit <hash>.`, where the hash is the SHA of the commit being reverted.
+
+### Type
+Must be one of the following:
+
+* **build**: Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (example scopes: cargo, benchmarks)
+* **ci**: Changes to our CI configuration files and scripts (example scopes: Circle)
+* **docs**: Documentation only changes
+* **feat**: A new feature
+* **fix**: A bug fix
+* **perf**: A code change that improves performance
+* **refactor**: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
+* **style**: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
+* **test**: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests
+
+### Scope
+The scope should be the name of the crate affected (as perceived by the person reading the changelog generated from commit messages.
+
+The following is the list of supported scopes:
+
+* **drop-struct-macro-derive**
+* **ffi-toolkit**
+* **fil-proofs-tooling**
+* **filecoin-proofs**
+* **logging-toolkit**
+* **sector-base**
+* **storage-proofs**
+
+There are currently a few exceptions to the "use package name" rule:
+
+* **cargo**: used for changes that change the cargo workspace layout, e.g.
+  public path changes, Cargo.toml changes done to all packages, etc.
+* **changelog**: used for updating the release notes in CHANGELOG.md
+* none/empty string: useful for `style`, `test` and `refactor` changes that are done across all
+  packages (e.g. `style: add missing semicolons`) and for docs changes that are not related to a
+  specific package (e.g. `docs: fix typo in tutorial`).
+
+> If you find yourself wanting to use other scopes regularly, please open an issue so we can discuss and extend this list.
+
+### Subject
+The subject contains a succinct description of the change:
+
+* use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
+* don't capitalize the first letter
+* no dot (.) at the end
+
+### Body
+Just as in the **subject**, use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes".
+The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.
+
+### Footer
+The footer should contain any information about **Breaking Changes** and is also the place to
+reference GitHub issues that this commit **Closes**.
+
+**Breaking Changes** should start with the word `BREAKING CHANGE:` with a space or two newlines. The rest of the commit message is then used for this.
+
+This guideline was adopted from the [Angular project](https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#commit).
+
 ## Licensing
 
-As mentioned in the [readme](README.md) all contributions are dual licensed under Apache 2 and MIT. 
+As mentioned in the [readme](README.md) all contributions are dual licensed under Apache 2 and MIT.