Git Commit Messages | Best Practices & Guidelines

Here’s a concise, “standard practice” cheat-sheet you can follow for Git commit messages. It blends Conventional Commits style (widely adopted) with practical DevOps/Jira usage.

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Core Format

<type>(<optional-scope>): <short imperative summary>
<blank line>
<body: what & why, not just how>
<blank line>
<footer: issue refs, breaking changes, co-author>

Imperative mood (“Add”, “Fix”, “Update”), max ~50 chars subject, wrap body ~72 chars, no trailing period in subject.

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Standard <type> Keywords (top tier)

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Extended Scenarios (DevOps-Friendly)

Note: Custom types (infra, sec, obs) are fine if your team agrees and tooling supports them. Otherwise map to closest core type.

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Good Subject Verb Starters

Add, Update, Remove, Fix, Refactor, Rename, Improve, Optimize, Configure, Revert, Bump, Merge.

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Referencing Issues / Tickets

Add in footer (preferred) or inline after summary if policy requires:

Footer style:

Closes #123
Refs JIRA-456

Subject inline (short teams):

feat(auth): add MFA (JIRA-789)

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Multi-Line Example

feat(payments): support UPI autopay

Adds recurring UPI mandate flow for Indian merchants.
Includes gateway callback handler and retry logic.

Closes FIN-3421.

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Quick Do / Don’t

Do

• Write the why in body (context helps code reviewers + future you).

• Group related changes; avoid “misc fixes”.

• Use scope for service/module (auth, api, ui, infra, helm, cicd).

Don’t

• Combine unrelated feature + refactor.

• Write past tense (“Added”); use imperative (“Add”).

• Dump auto-generated build logs in commit message.

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Fast Mapping Cheat (copy/paste)

feat: new feature
fix: bug fix
docs: docs only
style: formatting
refactor: code restructure
perf: performance boost
test: tests only
build: build/packaging
ci: pipeline/automation
chore: maintenance
revert: rollback commit

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Need this as a reusable snippet for your team’s README/contributing guide or a commit-lint config? Say the word and I’ll generate it.

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Additional Prefixes (Optional)

Some teams add custom scopes:

• feat(auth): add JWT token generation

• fix(ui): resolve button alignment

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Best Practices for Commit Messages

1. Use imperative tone – "add feature" not "added feature".

2. Keep subject < 50 characters, and capitalize the first letter.

3. Body (optional) – Explain why the change was made, not just what.

Example:

feat: add password reset endpoint

- Implemented API /reset-password
- Integrated with AWS SES for email
- Added unit tests

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Scenarios & Commit Examples

• New feature: feat: add S3 storage support

• Bug fix: fix: handle timeout issue in API calls

• Hotfix in production: fix: patch security vulnerability in JWT

• Code cleanup: chore: remove deprecated functions

• Pipeline change: ci: add Slack notification for failed builds

• Database migration: feat(db): add migration script for user table

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Git commit message best practices and examples specifically for a Cloud & DevOps Engineer, covering the types of tasks you commonly handle — infra provisioning, CI/CD, observability, containerization, scripting, etc.

✅ Git Commit Message Convention for Cloud & DevOps Engineers

Format:

php-templateCopyEdit<type>(<scope>): <short summary>

[Optional detailed body]

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🔧 1. Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation)

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🛠️ 2. CI/CD Pipeline Changes (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps)

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☁️ 3. Cloud Configurations (AWS/GCP/Azure)

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🐳 4. Containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)

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🔒 5. Security & Compliance

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📈 6. Monitoring & Observability (Prometheus, CloudWatch, Grafana)

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📜 7. Automation Scripts (Shell, Python, Lambda)

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📄 8. Documentation & Runbooks

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🧪 9. Testing Infrastructure

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🔁 10. Reverting or Rollbacks

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📌 Quick Summary Table