In a recent mailing list update, Linus Torvalds expressed frustration over passive voice in commit messages, urging developers to adopt a more active and clear communication style.

Linus Torvalds expressed frustration over the use of passive voice in merge commit messages, preferring active and imperative language instead.

He provided an example of how commit messages should be rewritten for clarity and consistency across the project.

Torvalds noted that while it’s not a major issue, it does add extra work when he has to rewrite messages to match his preference.

  • Ephera
    8·
    1 month ago

    So, uh, I have a colleague who studied linguistics, and when I explained to her that we write commit messages like that, her reaction was basically: What the fuck, why?

    My explanation wasn’t as sharp, as I didn’t call it “imperative” but rather just “infinitive”, which got me the immediate backlash that it’s not a sentence then, so why do you put a dot behind it?

    She did accept my descriptivist excuses explanation that we write it that way, because it’s terser, but I know it didn’t sit well with her.
    Will need to see what her reaction is to commanding the repo. 😅

      • Ephera
        1·
        1 month ago

        Yup. Commit messages are often shown in truncated form, which is when the dot helps to know whether you’re seeing the whole message or not.

        Well, and every so often, I’ll use the commit message to document why a change was made, which requires multiple sentences. Then the dot just serves its usual purpose of separating sentences.