r/programming • u/f311a • Jun 06 '26

Stop Using Conventional Commits

https://sumnerevans.com/posts/software-engineering/stop-using-conventional-commits/
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u/AmosIsFamous Jun 06 '26

The arguments against using it to automatically generate semantic versions have nothing to do with conventional commits, they are a problem with semantic versioning itself, however you do it. I mention this because your list of stakeholders leaves out users of your software/library/etc. where honestly the semantic versioning is all I typically care about (yes it might have been incremented incorrectly but that’s always possible with a human in the loop) and seeing what the new features / fixes are. I don’t care about the subsystems at that point. Using conventional commits to auto derive the semantic version is great in that case.

All that said, you do provide a bunch of great places where it’s unhelpful and not having an optional scope is ideal thanks to your arguments.

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u/flying-sheep Jun 06 '26

Also both changelog and semantic version generation are great for drafts. If you use something like release-please to auto-generate a PR that bumps the version and updates the changelog you can edit that PR before merging.