Lint commit messages

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npm latest CircleCI

  • 🚓 Be a good commitizen
  • 📦 Share configuration via npm
  • 🤖 Tap into conventional-changelog

Contents


What is commitlint

commitlint checks if your commit messages meet the conventional commit format.

In general the pattern mostly looks like this:

type(scope?): subject  #scope is optional; multiple scopes are supported (current delimiter options: "/", "\" and ",")

Real world examples can look like this:

chore: run tests on travis ci
fix(server): send cors headers
feat(blog): add comment section

Common types according to commitlint-config-conventional (based on the Angular convention) can be:

  • build
  • chore
  • ci
  • docs
  • feat
  • fix
  • perf
  • refactor
  • revert
  • style
  • test

These can be modified by your own configuration.

Benefits using commitlint

Getting started

# Install commitlint cli and conventional config
npm install --save-dev @commitlint/{config-conventional,cli}
# For Windows:
npm install --save-dev @commitlint/config-conventional @commitlint/cli

# Configure commitlint to use conventional config
echo "module.exports = {extends: ['@commitlint/config-conventional']}" > commitlint.config.js

To lint commits before they are created you can use Husky's commit-msg hook:

# Install Husky v6
npm install husky --save-dev
# or
yarn add husky --dev

# Activate hooks
npx husky install
# or
yarn husky install

Add hook

npx husky add .husky/commit-msg  "npx --no -- commitlint --edit ${1}"

Check the husky documentation on how you can automatically have Git hooks enabled after install for different yarn versions.

Detailed Setup instructions

CLI

  • Primary way to interact with commitlint.
  • npm install --save-dev @commitlint/cli
  • Packages: cli

Config

  • Configuration is picked up from:
    • .commitlintrc
    • .commitlintrc.json
    • .commitlintrc.yaml
    • .commitlintrc.yml
    • .commitlintrc.js
    • .commitlintrc.cjs
    • .commitlintrc.ts
    • commitlint.config.js
    • commitlint.config.cjs
    • commitlint.config.ts
    • commitlint field in package.json
  • Packages: cli, core
  • See Rules for a complete list of possible rules
  • An example configuration can be found at @commitlint/config-conventional

Shared configuration

A number of shared configurations are available to install and use with commitlint:

⚠️ If you want to publish your own shareable config then make sure it has a name aligning with the pattern commitlint-config-emoji-log or commitlint-config-your-config-name — then in extend all you have to write is emoji-log or your-config-name.

API

  • Alternative, programmatic way to interact with commitlint
  • Packages:
    • format - Format commitlint reports
    • lint - Lint a string against commitlint rules
    • load - Load shared commitlint configuration
    • read - Read commit messages from a specified range or last edit
  • See API for a complete list of methods and examples

Tools

Roadmap

Ideas: conventional-changelog/commitlint#94

commitlint is considered stable and is used in various projects as development tool.

We identify ease of adoption and developer experience as fields where there is room and need for improvement. The items on the roadmap should enhance commitlint regarding those aspects.

Version Support and Releases

  • Node.js LTS >= 14
  • git >= 2.13.2

Releases

Security patches will be applied to versions which are not yet EOL.
Features will only be applied to the current main version.

Release Inital release End-of-life
v17 16.05.2022 16.05.2023
v16 26.12.2021 26.12.2022
v15 17.11.2021 17.11.2022
v14 26.10.2021 26.10.2022
v13 24.05.2021 24.05.2022
v12 23.02.2021 23.02.2022
v11 13.09.2020 13.09.2020

Dates are subject to change.

We're not a sponsored OSS project. Therefore we can't promise that we will release patch versions for older releases in a timely manner.
If you are stuck on an older version and need a security patch we're happy if you can provide a PR.

Related projects

License

Copyright by @marionebl. All commitlint packages are released under the MIT license.

Development

commitlint is developed in a mono repository.

Install and run

git clone git@github.com:conventional-changelog/commitlint.git
cd commitlint
yarn
yarn run build # run build tasks
yarn start # run tests, again on change

For more information on how to contribute please take a look at our contribution guide.

Package dependency overview

commitlint-dependencies

(Partly outdated)

Publishing a release

npm login
nvm use (if you have nvm installed)
yarn clean
yarn install
yarn build
yarn test
yarn run publish --otp <one-time password>

Create Github release

  1. Copy changelog entry for the new version
  2. Create release for the new tag: https://github.com/conventional-changelog/commitlint/releases
  3. Post in the commitlint Slack-channel

Publish a next release (or i.e. patch release)

npm login
nvm use (if you have nvm installed)
yarn clean
yarn install
yarn build
yarn test
npx lerna publish --conventional-commits --dist-tag [`next` | `[PATCH_RELEASE_VERSION]`] --otp <one-time password>

If for some reason this stops in between, you can manually publish missing packages like this:

npm publish <package-name> --tag [`next` | `[PATCH_RELEASE_VERSION]`] --otp <one-time password>
Publishing (new) packages for the first time
npm publish [PACKAGE_NAME] --access public

For alias packages you need to add @alias/. Like we already do with @commitlint/ anyways. This is just a reminder to make sure we do not forget this.

Move next to latest
npm login
npx lerna exec --no-bail --no-private --no-sort --stream -- '[ -n "$(npm v . dist-tags.next)" ] && npm dist-tag add ${LERNA_PACKAGE_NAME}@$(npm v . dist-tags.next) latest --otp <one-time password>'

Remove next:

npx lerna exec --no-bail --no-private --no-sort --stream -- '[ -n "$(npm v . dist-tags.next)" ] && npm dist-tag rm ${LERNA_PACKAGE_NAME} next --otp <one-time password>'