Stop using -m in git. It encourages short, lazy commit messages. It makes it harder to figure out when changes occur. And yes, at some point you will need to track down when someone refactored the parser and introduced a buffer overflow bug.

If I had to guess why people use -m, it’s because git commit by default dumps you into vim. If you don’t use vim, this is a very unpleasant experience (cue the five million memes on quitting vim). There’s an easy solution though: change your editor! It’s not that hard:

git config --global core.editor emacs

Just substitute emacs for whichever editor. Personally I use nano because it boots fast and has just enough emacs keybindings to be tolerable.

Great! Now you can write commits in the civilized environment of an editor. You can include bulleted lists, long asides, even a snippet of code if you please.

Yes, it’s sliiightly more time than git commit -m "minor fixes and stuff". But your teammates, your future self, your kids and grandkids and great grandkids will thank you for having legible, helpful commit messages.

Plus it can be kinda nice! Maybe I’m weird, but there’s nothing better for me than committing a nice chunk of code and enumerating what exactly I did. It’s like a victory lap. I get to show off what I did and how.