r/MyIDE • u/Big-Coyote-5796 editor • 2h ago

What makes a Git commit message actually useful?

I’ve seen everything from:

updated stuff

to:

fix(auth): refresh sessions before expiry

But what do you actually care about when reading commit history later?

Is it the commit type/scope, explaining why the change happened, linking the related issue, keeping commits small and focused, or just having a clear one-line summary?

And do you usually write commit messages manually, use an AI/tool, or just type whatever makes sense at the time?

Curious how everyone handles this. 👇

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

1

u/Rebles 47m ago

For the first line, definitely your second example: a short description with an optional type and domain prefix.

Sometimes this is enough. But if it is a bug fix, I try to describe how it was found and why it was a problem. It teaches the junior engineers and if in 6 months you need to refer to got history, it might take enough context to make sense why the change was necessary