Recently, I was re-introduced to git commit linting.
I used it a long time ago, and I do believe there was some sort of a templating tool to make things easier.
Here’s a quick run of what I had to do yesterday.

First Error

$ git commit -m Introduce caching.
Error: subject may not be empty [subject-empty]

Turns out I needed to have the feat: (or any other subject type) in the beginning of the commit.

Second Error

$ git commit -m  feat: Introduce caching.
Error: subject must not be sentence-case, start-case, pascal-case, upper-case [subject-case]

Looks like upper case is not a good idea here. ok.

Third Error

$ git commit -m "feat: introduce caching."
Error: subject may not end with full stop [subject-full-stop]

Pedantic, but fine.

Commit:

$ git commit -m "feat: introduce caching"

It went through, but I didn’t feel very good about it.
I appreciate the effort to bring some order to commit messages, but having strict templating usually means commits don’t happen as frequently due to increased friction. If the cost of commit linting means no more atomic commits it’s hardly worth it.
Next week I’ll write about how friction could also prevent one from writing/producing content altogether.