cz-cli

Adopt a convention like commitizen: https://github.com/commitizen/cz-cli 'typeofchange(scopeofchange): reason for change' It sort helps force devs to type out more meaningful commit messages.

I also use something like this. A variation of Angular's commit convention[1]. There are tools like commitizen[2] that can help new adopters to build commit messages. [1]: https://gist.github.com/stephenparish/9941e89d80e2bc58a153 [2]: https://github.com/commitizen/cz-cli

Conventional Commit Standard [0] aims to solve this problem. Added to it is a good ecosystem of tools like Commitlint [1], Commitzen [2], Semantic Release [3] etc. [0] https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0-beta.2/ [1] https://github.com/conventional-changelog/commitlint [2] https://github.com/commitizen/cz-cli [3] https://github.com/semantic-release/semantic-release

This is similar to the Conventional Changelog: https://github.com/conventional-changelog/conventional-chang... I often use a customized Commit Lint in combo with Husky to enforce conventional changelog messages: https://github.com/marionebl/commitlint https://github.com/typicode/husky You can also throw in something like the Commitizen cli for newcomers: https://github.com/commitizen/cz-cli

As far as I can tell, the autogeneration of changelogs you can do with standard-version https://github.com/conventional-changelog/standard-version and commitzen ( https://github.com/commitizen/cz-cli ) fulfills the criteria Keep a Changelog wants: right date format, clear notes for breaking changes, and no unnecessary information from irrelevant commits. I've really liked using the two for a variety of systems - the strict commit message formatting and opinionated changelog generation means that the resulting changelogs are pretty darn readable. But ymmv.

The article doesn't mention it, but you can lint your git commits to enforce a style (eg https://github.com/jorisroovers/gitlint). Developers are human, and will sometimes forget to follow a process so using a tool to improve quality is more likely to achieve the desired result. Alternatively, use a tool that makes commits in a more rigorous way. Eg https://github.com/commitizen/cz-cli