conventional-commits

Conventional commits are a structured message format for Git that makes commit history machine-readable, enabling automated changelog generation and semantic versioning based on commit types like features or fixes.

To format a breaking change in a conventional commit, append an exclamation mark before the colon or include a BREAKING CHANGE footer, which signals the automated release tooling to increment the major version number.

Conventional commit types directly map to semantic versioning bumps: feat triggers a minor version increment, fix triggers a patch increment, and any breaking change triggers a major version increment for automated releases.

Yes, you can use conventional commits in your CI pipelines to automatically generate changelogs and automate releases, because the structured Git commit messages provide the required machine-readable history for release tooling.

The correct structure for a conventional commit message requires a type, an optional scope in parentheses, a colon, and a description, such as feat(auth): add OAuth2 login capability, ensuring consistent machine-readable Git history.