Commit Messages
We have very precise rules over how our git commit messages can be formatted. This leads to more readable messages that are easy to follow when looking through the project history.
- Separate subject from body with a blank line
- Limit the subject line to 70 characters
- Capitalize the subject line
- Do not end the subject line with a period
- Use the imperative mood in the subject line
- Use the body to explain what and why vs. how
- Each commit should be a single, stable change
Sentry enforces squash-merge for all pull requests into the default branch. This means that regardless of how many commits your feature branch has, they will be combined into a single commit when merged. The resulting commit message is what matters — it should follow the commit message format described below.
Because of this, you do not need to keep your branch’s individual commits clean or rebased. Feel free to commit incrementally, use fixup commits, or have “WIP” messages during development — they will all be squashed away on merge.
When your branch is behind the default branch, we advise merging main into your branch over rebasing:
- Merge preserves the existing commit history and, importantly, keeps the context of already-reviewed changes intact. Reviewers can see only the new changes since their last review.
- Rebase rewrites your branch’s commit history, which makes every commit appear new to reviewers and loses the ability to see incremental changes. This is especially disruptive on PRs that have already received review feedback.
When squash-merging via GitHub’s UI, consider taking this opportunity to craft a clear final commit message that follows the commit guidelines below. The default squash-merge message varies by repository — some use the PR title and description, while others concatenate all individual commit messages.
Each commit message consists of a header, a body, and an optional footer.
The header has a special format that includes a type, a scope and a subject:
<type>(<scope>): <subject> (<linear-id>)
<BLANK LINE>
<body>
<BLANK LINE>
<footer>
The header is mandatory and the scope of the header is optional. If you have a Jira issue to link to, add the jira-id the commit belongs to. This helps to connect changes back to Jira tickets.
Any line of the commit message should not be longer than 100 characters! This allows the message to be easier to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.
The footer should contain a closing reference to an issue as well as a relevant Sentry issue if any.
For example:
feat(stream): Add resolve in next release action
Expose a new action labeled 'resolve in next release'. It uses the existing API
behavior and sends the 'inNextRelease=true' payload.
Fixes GH-1234
As well as:
fix(stream): Handle empty reference on resolve action
Gracefully handle when a user has not selected any issues and tries to complete
the resolve action in the UI.
Fixes GH-1234
Fixes SENTRY-1234
If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with revert:, followed by the header of the reverted commit. In the body it should say: This reverts commit <hash>., where the hash is the SHA of the commit being reverted.
Must be one of the following:
| build: | Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (example scopes: webpack, python, npm) |
|---|---|
| ci: | Changes to our CI configuration files and scripts (example scopes: travis, zeus) |
| docs: | Documentation only changes |
| feat: | A new feature |
| fix: | A bug fix |
| perf: | A code change that improves performance |
| ref: | A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature (refactor) |
| chore: | Necessary changes for qualitative improvements that don't affect functionality, e.g. updating dependencies or adding instrumentation |
| style: | Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc) |
| test: | Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests |
| meta: | Some meta information in the repo changes (example scopes: owner files, editor config etc.) |
| license: | Changes to licenses |
The scope should be the name of the core component affected (as perceived by someone reading the changelog generated from commit messages). This means it should be the system impacted, not the literal file changed. For example, if the code primarily affects billing, you’d use the billing scope, even if the changes are in utility files or db schema.
The following is the list of suggested scopes:
- api
- auth
- billing
- dashboards
- discover
- integrations
- ui
- workflow
It is also acceptable to use the feature/project name as a scope.
The subject contains a succinct description of the change:
- Use the imperative, present tense: “change” not “changed” nor “changes”
- Capitalize the first letter
- No dot (.) at the end
Just as in the subject, use the imperative, present tense: “change” not “changed” nor “changes”. The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.
The footer should contain any information about Breaking Changes and is also the place to reference GitHub issues that this commit Closes.
Breaking Changes should start with the word BREAKING CHANGE: with a space or two newlines. The rest of the commit message is then used for this.
References
Our documentation is open source and available on GitHub. Your contributions are welcome, whether fixing a typo (drat!) or suggesting an update ("yeah, this would be better").
