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The common -rnd SVN commit log message format

commitmsg by Tibor 'Igor2' Palinkas on 2019-06-21

Tags: howto, commit, log, format, syntax, message, svn, subversion

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Abstract: We use scripts for speeding up writing the changelog. The script uses svn commit log for input. Writing the changelog is still a lot of very boring manual work. To help that process and reduce the overhead, please stick to the commit message format specified in this document.

  The most important parts to understand are:

Commit message format

Whitespace matters. The fromat is case sensitive. All the punctures matter.

in BNF


<commit_msg> ::= "[" <topic> "] -" <action> ": " <text>
<action> ::= "Add" | "Del" | "Fix" | "Change" | "Split" | "Move"

In plain text


[

topic

] -

action

: 

text



Example


[myplugin] -Fix: crash on missing background color in the header of the input file

Fields

topic

The project is informally split into topic groups for the changelog. These groups are often similar to the source tree layout, but not alwats. The purpose of this grouping is telling the reader, who is typically an end user with now knowledge of the source tree, about which conceptual part is affected by a change.

If you are unsure which group your change belongs to, do an svn log -v on the affected directiories and try to find a similar commit. Or ask the project leader.

action

Action tells the end user, from user pint of view, what to expect from the change. Typical values are:

text

A single line (do not use newlines, line wrap, etc.) of text that:

Since svn diff shows what's changed, focus should be on the why not on the what . Please never include the name of the person who commited or the date when the commit took place and usually avoid including file names too: these are metadata automatically recorded by svn.

Always use a real subversion client. If you have to use some gateway and you are committing from some other version control system, make sure it does not append garbage, such as "signed off by:" lines.