What tense do you use in Git Commit messages?

Let's pick each other's brains for a sec.

Do you use past or imperative tense in your commit messages?

Past

added button to page

Imperative

add button to page

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Discuss

Why? Pros vs. cons? Have you tried one and moved to the other? Which one makes better sense?

Comments

[Casey Brooks]

I usually use the present tense. It sounds more natural when thinking in terms of "what does this specific commit do". I think of a commit is a snapshot of an event, rather than a fixed point in history or a changelog.

[Jerod Santo]

It sounds more natural when thinking in terms of "what does this specific commit do".

+1000 to this. It also lends itself to easier reading/scrolling through git log. 👌

[Darío Kondratiuk]

I love these guidelines chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/

”A properly formed Git commit subject line should always be able to complete the following sentence:

If applied, this commit will your subject line here
For example:

If applied, this commit will refactor subsystem X for readability”

[Beeblebrox]

Meaning imperative instead of present or past tense

[Dian Fay]

The imperative is a mood not a tense! :) I use present tense and follow the Conventional Commits specification on most projects ("fix: disable current deployment type in index filters").

[Daniel O.]

Here is a small statistic based on the Github commit messages:

Fix: 25M
Fixed: 12M
Fixing: 22M
Fixes: 23M

Add: 25M
Added: 22M
Adding: 19M

Update: 18M
Updated: 14M
Updating: 18M

Remove: 25M
Removed: 18M
Removing: 18M
Removal: 7M

Delete: 7M
Deleted: 8M
Deleting: 9M

We can see that the imperative is used a little more than the past tense.

Personally, I use past tense because it sounds more polite.

[smuschel]

I'm using past tense (at least mostly) because the commit reflects something I did in the past. Seems natural to me this way...

[André Costa Lima]

I usually follow the guidelines proposed here which I think they make valid points. See section 5: use the imperative mood in the subject line.

I also adhere to the Conventional Commits spec.

[Claire Martinez]

I finish this sentence "If you pull this it ..."

i.e.
adds new feature to menu
updates readme
fixes broken sql

[Jochem Stoel]

This is good.

[Forest Hoffman]

Using imperatives is the official way of writing commit messages, as if each message were prefixed by "This commit will...". I personally prefer this as it's very straightforward and shortens some messages by a few characters.

From git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed...

It's also a good idea to use the imperative present tense in these messages. In other words, use commands. Instead of "I added tests for" or "Adding tests for," use "Add tests for."

[JavaScript Joel]

I like to use Imperative for consistency with Jira tickets.

ABC-1234 add Either type
-------- ---------------      
    \           \
  Ticket       Title

[Yaser Al-Najjar]

I was using past tense till I realized present simple is being used in GitHub, GitLab, and GitKraken commits (Add/Update README, Merge: foo, Revert: bar).