I read once that git commit messages should be in the imperative present tense, e.g. "Add tests for x". I always find myself using the past tense, e.g. "Added tests for x" though, which feels a lot more natural to me.
Here's a recent John Resig commit showing the two in one message:
Tweak some more jQuery set results in the manipulation tests. Also fixed the order of the expected test results.
Does it matter? Which should I use?
I wrote a fuller description on 365git.
The use of the imperative, present tense is one that takes a little getting used to. When I started mentioning it, it was met with resistance. Usually along the lines of “The commit message records what I have done”. But, Git is a distributed version control system where there are potentially many places to get changes from. Rather than writing messages that say what you’ve done; consider these messages as the instructions for what applying the commit will do. Rather than having a commit with the title:
Renamed the iVars and removed the common prefix.Have one like this:
Rename the iVars to remove the common prefixWhich tells someone what applying the commit will do, rather than what you did. Also, if you look at your repository history you will see that the Git generated messages are written in this tense as well - “Merge” not “Merged”, “Rebase” not “Rebased” so writing in the same tense keeps things consistent. It feels strange at first but it does make sense (testimonials available upon application) and eventually becomes natural.
Having said all that - it’s your code, your repository: so set up your own guidelines and stick to them.
If, however, you do decide to go this way then
git rebase -iwith the reword option would be a good thing to look into.
