Page History
A commit message should have:
- The GitTrac ticket number, in the form #123. Note that you cannot have a "#" at the start of a line; Git will think it's a comment. Common techniques include putting the comment at the end of the line, or enclosing it in parenthesis like (#123). If multiple tickets are involved, feel free to list them all. If zero tickets are involved, consider creating a ticket so people have a place to discuss the change and a convenient place to point to for all relevant information.
- Why? This number makes correlating the version history easier (assuming you include the ticket number in a comment in the version history like you should). It also means that the ticket can include links to the relevant commits.
- A brief description of what you changed.
- Optionally, some extended discussion on what you changed, if you think it useful.
- Finally, if you are confident that this change should not be mentioned in the version history, a brief note explaining why. Is it entirely invisible to the user (internal cleanup)? Does it fix a bug that was never released?
Finally, remember to update the Version History! VersionHistoryHowTo
Strongly consider using the format specified by the GlissTool. It makes reports from the commits easier to generate, most notably you can put your Version History entry there and have it automatically extracted later.