Standardized Git Commit Message Guidelines and Tooling with Commitizen
This article explains the conventional Git commit message format, its components and benefits, and demonstrates how to enforce the standard using tools such as Commitizen, commitlint, husky, and standard-version, providing practical examples and configuration snippets for developers.
AngularJS documentation recommends a strict git commit format to make history more readable and to generate changelogs automatically.
The commit message consists of a header , optional body , and optional footer . The header contains a type , optional scope , and a subject . The type must be one of feat , fix , docs , style , refactor , build , perf , test , chore , ci , or the special revert . The subject should be a concise, imperative description under 50 characters.
<type>(<scope>): <subject> <body> <footer>
Benefits of this convention include clear first‑line summaries, detailed bodies and footers that explain purpose and impact, easy filtering by type , and automatic changelog generation.
Using Commitizen
Commitizen provides a CLI ( git cz ) that prompts for the required fields. Install it globally:
npm install -g commitizenInitialize a project with the cz-conventional-changelog adapter:
commitizen init cz-conventional-changelog --save-dev --save-exactAlternatively, make the repository Commitizen‑friendly by adding a .czrc or config.commitizen entry in package.json :
{
"config": {
"commitizen": {
"path": "./node_modules/cz-conventional-changelog"
}
}
}Customizing Prompts with cz‑customizable
Install the customizable adapter and re‑initialize:
npm install cz-customizable --save-devcommitizen init cz-customizable --save-dev --save-exact --forceConfigure a .czrc or .cz-config.js file to define Chinese prompts and commit types.
Linting Commits with commitlint
Install @commitlint/config-conventional and the CLI:
npm i --save-dev @commitlint/config-conventional @commitlint/cliCreate commitlint.config.js :
module.exports = {
extends: ["@commitlint/config-conventional"],
rules: {}
};Use Husky to run commitlint on the commit-msg hook:
module.exports = {
"hooks": {
"commit-msg": "commitlint -E HUSKY_GIT_PARAMS"
}
};Optionally trigger git cz automatically on prepare-commit-msg :
"hooks": {
"prepare-commit-msg": "exec < /dev/tty && git cz --hook || true"
}Generating CHANGELOG with standard‑version
Install the tool and add a release script:
npm i --save-dev standard-version{
"scripts": {
"release": "standard-version"
}
}Running npm run release will bump the version according to commit type and generate a formatted CHANGELOG.md .
All the referenced links and further reading are listed at the end of the original article.
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