Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2020. Since then, Atomist has evolved and updated its platform and product offerings. For up-to-date information, check out the Atomist product page.

This post is actually not about how to write a better commit message. It's about writing commit messages that can trigger commands to run.

The idea for this feature came to us when GitHub introduced draft pull requests. It was now possible to create pull requests that were not reviewable or mergeable. This makes it feasible to begin socializing a change while it's still in progress. We wondered whether it might be convenient to use a branch commit to tell GitHub to create the draft pull request right then and there.

It turns out that we had several skills that were already parsing commit messages (at Atomist, we call our units of automation "skills"). For example, the [PR Commit Check skill][pcc-skill] automatically comments on non-compliant commit messages, and the [Keep a Changelog skill][kac-skill]) uses commit messages to maintain a change log. So it really wasn't a stretch to go that extra step and start parsing commands out of these commit messages. Here's an example that shows pull request creation:

$ git commit \
    -m "Feature(scope): switch to peer api" \
    -m "Migrating from client to peer api" \
    -m "/pr --title \"Peer Migration\" --base main --label api --draft"

(I only recently learned that you can use the -m flag multiple times in one invocation of git commit. I'm afraid I may be overly enthusiastic about this right now. Slash commands must be the first thing that occurs on a line but they can occur anywhere in the commit message.)

The first two lines of the message are [conventional commits (literally)][cc]. The third line is a command to open a draft pull request. When this commit is pushed, the GitHub application web hook fires, an event is delivered to the [Github Slash Command skill][skill], and the pull request is opened. If you've already installed the Atomist GitHub application, you can enable this command for your commits with one click on our [skill management page][skill].

Once we have a pull request in draft mode, we can continue pushing commits. Eventually, we'll probably want to open up this pull request for reviews. As a GitHub slash command, this would like the following commit:

$ git commit \
    -m "Feature(scope): switch to peer api"
    -m "/pr ready"

The /pr ready command transitions the pull request from draft mode. If the committer had wanted to assign a reviewer, or add a label, they can put that into the message as well:

$ git commit \
    -m "Feature(scope): switch to peer api"
    -m "/pr ready --reviewer kipz --label staging"

We've also added commands to close pull requests (/pr close), create new issues (/issue create), lock and unlock conversations (/issue lock and issue unlock), and notify users or channels in Slack (/cc). These commands can also be combined. For example, here's a commit message that will create a Slack notification, a new GitHub Issue, and will also make the current pull request as being ready for review:

Fix(api): switch to peer api

Migrating from client to peer api
/cc #api-team
/issue create --title "New Peer api documentation" --assignee alyssa --label documentation --label api
/pr ready

After satisfying ourselves that adding commands was straight forward, we started looking for other places where we might be wasting our time typing command-less messages.

Issue and Pull Request Comments

GitHub issues and pull requests also raise events. Personally, I really like doing label management directly within Issue comments. It has always bothered me when I find myself in a GitHub repo that doesn't already have the label, and I never have to worry about this when I write /label mylabel in a comment. This helps me to standardize how how I use labels across different repos. The command /label bug, api, dev will add 3 labels to the issue (and create the labels if they don't already exist). I can also type /label --rm dev to remove a label afterwards.

github-slash-commands-skill-comment-1

Some teams spend a lot of time in Slack. If you want to draw attention to an issue, typing /cc #docs or /cc @alyssa to generate a Slack notification might be just the thing. It is often while typing a comment that I realize that I might be saying something interesting (finally) for a particular audience. If you're already using our [Github Notifications skill][gn-skill], then you'll have noticed something quite similar when GitHub logins are automatically translated to @-mentions in Slack.

Actions in Chat

This is an example of combining messages for both humans and bots in GitHub issue comment.

chatops

This message is mostly meant for human readers. However, it also contains sections intended for a bot user. Although technically speaking the bot parts could be stripped out, there is some utility in leaving them behind. New members can learn useful operational details by watching the thread.

User Attribution

For many operations, a GitHub app can operate as itself. However, users can also authorize a GitHub application to do things as them. This is the difference between the two operations below. Both of these pull requests were created using a /pr command in a git message.

from-atomist
from-user

In the first, the committer had not authorized the application to act on their behalf. Therefore, the PR was created by the GitHub app installation. In the second, the user had authorized the app to act on their behalf. For some operations, keeping track of the author is important. To facilitate this, we send authorization links, as Commit comments, whenever an unauthorized user sends a command.

There are also some commands that can only run with a user authorization. These commands won't run unless the message, or comment was made by an authorized user. One example is /pr ready. If you issue this command without having first authorized your user, the bot just sends an authorization link. The pull request will stay in draft mode.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2020. Since then, Atomist has evolved and updated its platform and product offerings. For up-to-date information, check out the Atomist product page.