You'll get plenty of devs who's make an impassioned argument that present tense reads better (and they'd be right to an extent) but honestly it's really more of an OCD thing than anything. The important thing is that messages are detailed enough to be accurate but terse enough to be eyeballed quickly (if you need more detail then include that after the first line summary); and that you include reference numbers if you're commit is in relation to a ticket (eg JIRA, Github Issues, etc).

Some people add tags, emoticons and other stuff. But the real key is consistency. Pick a format and stick with it

If the key is consistency, use present tense. If you consistently use past tense, that works until your team merges with another one that's more conventional.

The commit message is the headline of your story. Headlines are in present tense even though they describe past events.

Honestly, out of all the things people argue about this has always struck me the strangest. It's the part that makes the least real world difference (vs not including ticket numbers - for example) yet it seems to be the thing people get the most impassioned about.

Consistency is important, but if you're expending more energy arguing about it than you would deciphering past tense message then you have serious questions to ask yourself. :P

If you want consistency, do the simplest thing possible. Past tense is more complicated then present tense, and does not add value.

Past tense doesn't describe what the commit does, it describes what the developer did.

This.

The point of an imperative present tense voice is to consider the message from the point of the commit, not from the point of the committer.

Commit messages aren't meant to show you did work, they aren't meant to show what work you did either. They are meant to show what changed.

You mean "what changes." Consistency dammit!

Git itself uses the present tense (Merge/Revert)

This for me is the main reason I prefer to use present tense since it maintains consistency.

I tend to use present tense as I'm describing the change that is to be applied to the code by the commit. It often also is terser than past tense by a few chars, sometimes just enough to fit in the commit title (Add vs Added).

Present tense -- it's (almost?) always a little shorter, so you can fit more information into the "subject" line.

"If applied, this commit will ______".

Simple present[0] tense.

0: https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/p...

Can now open multiple files simultaneously.

...OK, now what?

Allow opening multiple files simultaneously

Handle multiple open files

Support multiple open files

Or similar

Using the present tense makes sense as that's the context of the change and it makes it easy to reference what it used to do or what it's set up to do into the future by using other tenses.

The sometimes suggested guideline is: make commit message so that it would make sense if added to the phrase "If applied this commit will…".

ditto