In a recent mailing list update, Linus Torvalds expressed frustration over passive voice in commit messages, urging developers to adopt a more active and clear communication style.

Linus Torvalds expressed frustration over the use of passive voice in merge commit messages, preferring active and imperative language instead.

He provided an example of how commit messages should be rewritten for clarity and consistency across the project.

Torvalds noted that while it’s not a major issue, it does add extra work when he has to rewrite messages to match his preference.

  • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
    145·
    2 months ago

    I read his message. He didn’t seem grumpy or frustrated to me; just encouraging folks to use a certain style that’s already in wide use, for reduced noise and better consistency.

    • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
      70·
      2 months ago

      The message:

      "I try to make my merge commit messages be somewhat “cohesive”, and so I often edit the pull request language to match a more standard layout and language. It’s not a big deal, and often it’s literally just about whitespace so that we don’t have fifteen different indentation models and bullet syntaxes. I generally do it as I read through the text anyway, so it’s not like it makes extra work for me.

      But what does make extra work is when some maintainers use passive voice, and then I try to actively rewrite the explanation (or, admittedly, sometimes I just decide I don’t care quite enough about trying to make the messages sound the same).

      So I would ask maintainers to please use active voice, and preferably just imperative."

      Giving an example of a bad commit message, Torvalds provided this example: “In this pull request, the Xyzzy driver error handling was fixed to avoid a NULL pointer dereference.” He believes this should have been written as follows: “This fixes a NULL pointer dereference in …”

      • Hazzard@lemm.ee
        51·
        2 months ago

        Honestly, makes sense, the active voice version is just… more efficient and easier to parse quickly.

      • naught
        281·
        2 months ago

        Weird the example he gave isn’t imperative, which I think would be “Fix a null pointer dereference in …”

      • TeoTwawki@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        It’s not a big deal, and often it’s literally just about whitespace so that we don’t have fifteen different indentation models and bullet syntaxes.

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
        23·
        2 months ago

        Any in many ways, that is the way engineers should speak to other engineers when analyzing a problem.

        If two or more people can actually share a common goal of finding the best solution, everyone involved should be making sure that no time is wasted chasing poor solutions. This not only takes the ability to be direct to someone else, but it also requires that you can parse what others are telling you.

        If someone makes something personal or takes something personal, they need a break. Go take a short walk or something. (Linus is a different sort of creature though. I get it.)

        TBH, this is part of the reason I chose my doctor (GP). She is extremely direct when problem solving and has no problems theory-crafting out loud. Sure, we are social to a degree, but we share many of the same professional mannerisms. (We had a short discussion on that topic the other day, actually. I just made her job easier because I give zero fucks about being judged for any of my personal health issues.)

    • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
      16·
      2 months ago

      good: Add foo interface.

      Another commit style is summarizing what a commit does. In this case it would be someting like:

      Adds foo interface.

      I think this style is more in line with auditing code.

      • theherk@lemmy.world
        9·
        2 months ago

        This indicative mood is something I would send back for correction or correct myself where I am the maintainer. However I understand that although this is pretty consistent through FOSS, it is not a settled matter especially in corpo-land. Most important is that it is consistent within a project. See many differing views here on Stackoverflow, noting the most popular answer though is imperative as Linus requests.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
          4·
          2 months ago

          Honestly I’ve never thought about it this much. I’ll have to make an effort to stop writing in past tense.

    • devfuuu@lemmy.world
      16·
      2 months ago

      This has been the recommendation and the way to do it for decades everywhere I’ve been too.

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    2 months ago

    Linus Torvalds: creator of Linux and Git, and hero to all English teachers everywhere!

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      9·
      2 months ago

      So, uh, I have a colleague who studied linguistics, and when I explained to her that we write commit messages like that, her reaction was basically: What the fuck, why?

      My explanation wasn’t as sharp, as I didn’t call it “imperative” but rather just “infinitive”, which got me the immediate backlash that it’s not a sentence then, so why do you put a dot behind it?

      She did accept my descriptivist excuses explanation that we write it that way, because it’s terser, but I know it didn’t sit well with her.
      Will need to see what her reaction is to commanding the repo. 😅

        • Ephera@lemmy.ml
          1·
          2 months ago

          Yup. Commit messages are often shown in truncated form, which is when the dot helps to know whether you’re seeing the whole message or not.

          Well, and every so often, I’ll use the commit message to document why a change was made, which requires multiple sentences. Then the dot just serves its usual purpose of separating sentences.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    16·
    2 months ago

    depending on the time of day my commits range from war and peace to 'jfc here is just the message “yeah” for the next twenty commits because the client keeps requesting stupid ass decisions".

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
    15·
    2 months ago

    I like good commit messages that use less words but still give the full picture. If something hacky was done then a comment is better. I like mine with imperative voice since it avoids writing a prose.

    “Fix a bug where when doing x then y happens”

    “Add setting to control x”

    • Prison Mike@links.hackliberty.org
      7·
      2 months ago

      I really don’t like starting with “fix.” You can just describe it without saying “fix” most times.

      • Fix Strings containing whitespace
      • Escape Strings containing whitespace in CSVExporter
      • Caveman@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        I always thought of the “how” being better explained by the code itself where you can see string.replace(" ", "\ ") as the actual fix while the message says the “why”.

        I would still have “Fix a bug where strings containing whitespace break CSVExporter” as my go to message.

        I guess our viewpoints are different based whether we want the commit messages to represent tasks or changes. They both have their uses of course. Looking at changes to a file to know what people have done to it is better with a “changes” type message but looking at the history to check “did we actually complete this or was it just marked as completed in the issue tracker?” is better with a task based message.

        Task management where every issue is put on a ticket and tracked would my type of messages obsolete but at my current company theyre very useful.

      • leftytighty@slrpnk.netEnglish
        21·
        2 months ago

        I basically stole your comment but made a worse version. On this note, though, there’s sometimes value in using words like “fix” or other kinds of tagging or consistent formatting in the sense that you can do a meta-analysis of the repo history to look at trends (like the ratio of fixes to feature work) over time.

        Issue tracking software obviates that, somewhat, but having that info embedded in the repo history lets you go further and look at which files have the most fixes etc.

        Existing tools out there sometimes do this exact thing, but it can be manually done as well

    • leftytighty@slrpnk.netEnglish
      51·
      2 months ago

      Knowing you fixed a bug is minimal information and usually covered by an issue reference in professional software development. I’d prefer to see the commit describing what the fix is actually doing to fix the bug.

  • Skates@feddit.nl
    15·
    2 months ago

    Linus Torvalds expressed frustration over the use of passive voice in merge commit messages, preferring active and imperative language instead.

    Things To Care About, vol 147, 2nd edition

  • Badland9085@lemm.ee
    13·
    2 months ago

    Love a good commit message. I wish I could say what we perceive as “good” is instead thought to be “normal”, but we aren’t there yet I guess.

    If the word “imperative mood” is hard to grasp, this is what I do. I just finish this sentence in less than 50 - 75 words, length depending on consensus.

    This commit will …

    Add more details in the body if needed.

    This sort of style extends to PRs/MRs as well.

    This PR/MR will …

  • Gallardo994
    4·
    2 months ago

    Upd

    Fix

    Upd

    Fuck

    Updated file1

    Fuck

    Fix

    Updated file2

    Merge remote-tracking branch other-user1-feature

    Fix after merge

    Upd

    Revert “Merge remote-tracking branch other-user1-feature”

    Revert “Revert “Merge remote-tracking branch other-user1-feature””

  • mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    Updates & fixes -> I personally made updates with my bare hands and then also actively fixed some broken things also with my bare hands

  • Reptorian@programming.dev
    2·
    2 months ago

    When I do commit, I write up the title of what I did, and describe it, and then use periods for related commits. Just easier.

  • hector
    614·
    2 months ago

    Linus is a scary man and seems really hard to work with

    The fact that Linux blossomed anyways goes to show his talent

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      19·
      2 months ago

      People say things like this but he’s probably successfully worked with several hundred more people than your average worker ever will.

      • hector
        121·
        2 months ago

        He said he has trouble feeling empathy and he’s working on it. When this happens he was super mean towards the volunteer work of some contributors who quit the project.

        I’m not blaming Linus, I’m just saying I don’t feel like it’s a good atmosphere to work in Linux. It doesn’t feel friendly at all

        Thus the scary and stressing quality

        • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
          65·
          2 months ago

          That’s not scary. The trick when dealing with that kind of review is to parse out the technical and not take the rest personally, which maybe takes a certain kind of personality.

          • hector
            51·
            2 months ago

            Not being a jerk and having empathy are two necessary things to create a healthy work environment and are especially required when volunteers take from their off-time to work on your project.

          • derpgon@programming.dev
            3·
            2 months ago

            I do that by default. I have to actively think about empathy when I do CRs, because the other devs (who should not be doing these kinds of mistakes) just can’t fucking do their job right for once.

            But when I am getting a review, I don’t get mad unless I am personally attacked (happened with a colleague who had a very high ego and somehow made it to a higher position, finally being let go about half a year back).