We have very precise rules over how our git commit messages can be formatted for maintenance of the changelog and semvar versioning. 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.

Recommended workflow

Complete a feature or bug
Run gulp or gulp test to run unit tests.
Commit changes with the commit message format (see below)
Run gulp bump to update the version in package.json, add a git tag and generate the updated CHANGELOG.md (see https://github.com/ajoslin/conventional-changelog)..
conventionalChangelog
Commit updated package.json and CHANGELOG.md files
Push
Create PR

The reason why you should commit and tag after conventionalChangelog is that the CHANGELOG should be included in the new release, hence gitRawCommitsOpts.from defaults to the latest semver tag.

This process is automated with gulp, including determining the type of version to bump (major, minor or patch). To use Gulp, follow these steps:

Complete a feature or bug
Commit changes with the commit message format (see below)
Run gulp release (this will stage and commit the changes, bump the version in package.json, run conventional-changelog to update the changelog, tag the version, and push the changes0.
Create PR

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.

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:

feat: A new feature
fix: A bug fix
docs: Documentation only changes
style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
perf: A code change that improves performance
test: Adding missing tests
chore: Changes to the build process or auxiliary tools and libraries such as documentation generation

Scope

The scope could be anything specifying place of the commit change. For example $location, $browser, $compile, $rootScope, ngHref, ngClick, ngView, etc...

Subject

The subject contains succinct description of the change:

use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
don't capitalize 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.

Examples

Appears under "Features" header, pencil subheader:

feat(pencil): add 'graphiteWidth' option

Appears under "Bug Fixes" header, graphite subheader, with a link to issue #GSNP-28:

fix(graphite): stop graphite breaking when width < 0.1

Closes #123

Appears under "Performance Improvements" header, and under "Breaking Changes" with the breaking change explanation:

perf(pencil): remove graphiteWidth option

BREAKING CHANGE: The graphiteWidth option has been removed. The default graphite width of 10mm is always used for performance reason.

The following commit and commit 667ecc1 do not appear in the changelog if they are under the same release. If not, the revert commit appears under the "Reverts" header.

revert: feat(pencil): add 'graphiteWidth' option

This reverts commit 667ecc1654a317a13331b17617d973392f415f02.

A detailed explanation can be found in this [document][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QrDFcIiPjSLDn3EL15IJygNPiHORgU1_OOAqWjiDU5Y/edit#].

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Package last updated on 12 Mar 2016

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Install

gulp-conventional-release