Stop Using Conventional Commits

Re:Stop Using Conventional Commits by andrybak on Friday June 05, 2026 @08:39PM (#48420187)

The difference is that the Jira ticket is for everyone involved in a project (business analyst, UI designer, QA, support, DBA), while commit messages are written with developers being almost exclusive audience. PRJ-123 might explain why an end user might need it, but the commit message explains why the change (diff) is the way that it is. The ticket answers requirements-level questions, the commit message answers code-level questions. Commit messages are useful both during the review and when a future maintainer is reading the code.

> Additionally, if a change requires multiple commits, you don't want to be repeating the justifications for the entire feature in every commit message. It's redundant. But the commits will all be tied together by the ticket reference in the commit message.

Different commits do different things, so require different justifications. Here's a fictional example to demonstrate:

First commit:

    [PRJ-123] Server: extract class Foo
    
    In the next commit, we're going to need to re-use the foo logic from
    class Bar. Extract new class Foo from Bar to make it available for
    re-use.

Second commit on the same ticket

    [PRJ-123] Server: use Foo in Baz
    
    The users of BazClient need to be able to see foo information in the
    baz dialog.  Include Foo in the data sent by class Baz in the server.

Side note: the user might not even know that they are looking at Foo and Baz, it might be called something else in the UI they are shown. Whether or not this needs to be included in the commit message depends on the situation.

And later in a commit fixing a bug:

    [PRJ-456] Server: check ID for null in Foo
    
    When class Foo was extracted from Bar in commit deadbeef ([PRJ-123]
    Server: extract class Foo, 2026-06-06), a null check for the field
    ID got lost by accident.
    
    Check the field ID for null in class Foo to avoid a
    NullPointerException when a foo event is sent to Baz.

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Re:Stop Using Conventional Commits by ralferoo on Saturday June 06, 2026 @08:13AM (#48424225)

Personal preference I guess, but to me all of those commit messages are way too wordy. I'd probably have:

  [PRJ-123] Refactor Foo out from Bar

  [PRJ-123] Include Foo data in BazClient

  [PRJ-456] Null-guard on Foo ID to avoid data loss
  Bug introduced in commit deadbeef

And then in PRJ-456, I'd also have the comment about bug introduced in commit deadbeef, and link the two JIRAs if it was significant, or just mention it in a comment for a minor fix.

For me personally, nothing else in your commit messages adds value that can't be seen trivially from glancing at the changes.

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Re:Stop Using Conventional Commits by andrybak on Saturday June 06, 2026 @12:21PM (#48426452)

Git is more robust than Jira. Git log is accessible offline. Jira descriptions exist only as long as people managing the Jira instance are competent and are migrating the necessary data correctly when migrations are needed. Even migrations from one Jira instance to another (e.g. when companies get acquired and two Jira servers get merged) can be extremely brittle.

It's fair that maybe such simple trivial changes don't deserve such a wordy commit message. But these are just fictional examples that I came up with on the spot. Refactorings, new features, and bugfixes can all have various levels of complexity.

A good commit message helps answer the "why?" questions first and foremost. If a diff is fairly large, pointing out the most important change can be useful. Explanations for non-trivial dataflow can sometimes not make sense in separate documentation, but still be relevant in a commit message.

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Re:Stop Using Conventional Commits by dinfinity on Saturday June 06, 2026 @04:37PM (#48428785)

> Git is more robust than Jira.

Much of such issue tracking systems may be better in the repo in the first place. A Jira issue could just be a markdown file committed in the repo. A code review could just be commits of inline remarks/comments.

Maybe there is some value to slapping on a web interface on top of that data for ease of use, but as to where the data lives I'm leaning towards putting everything in repo.

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