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Lint commit messages

Demo generated with svg-term-cli

cat docs/assets/commitlint.json | svg-term --out docs/assets/commitlint.svg --frame --profile=Seti --height=20 --width=80

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

Contents

• What is commitlint
  • Benefits of using commitlint
• Getting started
• CLI
• Config
• Shared configuration
• API
• Tools
• Version Support and Releases
• Related projects
• License
• Development
  • Install and run
  • Testing
  • Publishing a release

---

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 of using commitlint

• Why Use Conventional Commits?
• "The perks of committing with conventions" (Talk slides)

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

Warning

It's necessary that you use commit-msg as the name for hook file. Read Git hooks documentation for more info.

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

Or use installed package instead

npm pkg set scripts.commitlint="commitlint --edit"
npx husky add .husky/commit-msg 'npm run commitlint ${1}'

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

Detailed Setup instructions

• Local setup - Lint messages on commit with husky
• CI setup - Lint messages during CI builds

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.mjs
  • .commitlintrc.ts
  • .commitlintrc.cts
  • commitlint.config.js
  • commitlint.config.cjs
  • commitlint.config.mjs
  • commitlint.config.ts
  • commitlint.config.cts
  • 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:

• @commitlint/config-angular
• @commitlint/config-conventional
• @commitlint/config-lerna-scopes
• @commitlint/config-nx-scopes
• @commitlint/config-patternplate
• conventional-changelog-lint-config-atom
• conventional-changelog-lint-config-canonical
• commitlint-config-jira

⚠️ 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.

Documentation

Check the main website.

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

• commitizen adapter
• prompt

Roadmap

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

Ideas: conventional-changelog/commitlint#94

Version Support and Releases

• Node.js LTS >= 18
• 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	Initial release
v18	10/2023
v17	05/2022
v16	12/2021
v15	11/2021
v14	10/2021
v13	05/2021
v12	02/2021
v11	09/2020

EOL is usually after around a year.

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

• conventional-changelog Generate a changelog from conventional commit history
• commitizen Simple commit conventions for internet citizens
• create-semantic-module CLI for quickly integrating commitizen and commitlint in new or existing 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
yarn run commitlint # run CLI

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

Testing

From the project root directory, use the following commands to run the test suite

yarn clean
yarn install
yarn build
yarn test

Package dependency overview

(Partly outdated)

Publishing a release

npm login
nvm use (if you have nvm installed)

• nvm
• asdf is supported as well

yarn clean
yarn install
yarn build
yarn test
yarn run publish --otp <one-time password>

If something in between fails (like a new package was added and needs to be published for the first time but you forgot) you can use lerna publish from-package to publish anything that has not been published yet.

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

From within the folder first i.e. cd @commitlint/new-packages.

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>'