cmtr

Helper script to add user initials and branch name to commits


Keywords
commit, git, teams
License
MIT
Install
npm install cmtr@0.1.6

Documentation

CMTR (committer)

cmtr is a small command line utility to aid with git commits, especially the commit message.

The motivation for this project arises from trying to harmonise commit messages between members of a team. We wanted everybody to prepend their commit messages with their initials and the branch name, so that they're easier to identify and to facilitate integration with other tools that try to read branch names from commit messages.

As part of the experimentation with git and node that inspires this project, a very basic files selection tool has been included, to be able to view, select and de-select files before committing them.

Installation

cmtr is written in JavaScript, so Node needs to be installed in the system.

When Node is installed, npm will be available. So just run the following command to install:

npm install -g cmtr

You can use Yarn as well:

yarn global add cmtr

Usage

Run cmtr inside a git repository:

cmtr

To run with options:

cmtr -am 'My commit message' -u 'JS'

Options

Option Description
-a, --all Add all files to staging (just runs git add --all)
-m, --message <msg> Commit message
-u, --user <usr> Prepend user name to commit message
-b, --branch Prepend current branch name to commit message
-p, --parseIssue Attempt to parse issue name from the branch name
-s, --status Show the git status to start with
-f, --files Interactively select files to commit
-c, --config Interactively set up configuration

Sometimes we name branches with the Jira issue plus some description with a combination of dashes or underscores. The parseIssue option will try to extract the issue name from it. For instance, from the branch name "feature/CODE-100_Some-description" the program will extract "CODE-100" and prepend it to the commit message.

Configuration

To turn on some options by default run the configuration utility with cmtr --config. The configuration will be saved in ~/.cmtr-config.json, which can be created/edited manually if desired.

This is an example configuration:

{
  "userName": "JS",
  "includeBranch": true,
  "parseIssue": true,
  "wrapper": true,
  "showFiles": true,
  "protectedBranches": [
    "master",
    "develop"
  ]
}

Possible values for the configuration file:

Key Type Description
userName string Prepend user name
includeBranch boolean Prepend branch name
parseIssue boolean Extract Jira style issue name from the branch
wrapper boolean Wrap user and branch with []
showFiles boolean Show interactive file selector
gitAddAll boolean Add all files to commit
protectedBranches array[string] Warn before committing to the branches specified

Happy committing!