Adopt commitizen for commit messages.

[bhouston]

I heard it is something like this:

# Install
pnpm add -D commitizen cz-conventional-changelog

# Add to package.json
"config": {
  "commitizen": {
    "path": "cz-conventional-changelog"
  }
}

And then when you commit, it will give you an interactive shell experience to create the message?

[bhouston]

/mycoder can you investigate this and write a plan for adopting this? Will this impact the automation in release.yml? Right now I believe the commitlint is disabled because it was causing problems for the automation release.yml.

[github-actions]

Plan for Adopting Commitizen

I've investigated commitizen and how it would fit into the current project setup. Here's my analysis and plan:

Current Status

1. Commit Message Standards:

   • You already have a good .gitmessage template following Conventional Commits format
   • Commitlint is installed and configured, but the hook is commented out in .husky/commit-msg

2. Release Automation:

   • The project uses semantic-release in the release.yml workflow
   • Semantic-release depends on Conventional Commits for version determination

Implementation Plan

1. Install Dependencies

pnpm add -D commitizen cz-conventional-changelog

2. Configure Commitizen

Add to package.json:

"config": {
  "commitizen": {
    "path": "cz-conventional-changelog"
  }
},
"scripts": {
  // existing scripts...
  "commit": "cz"
}

3. Enable Commitlint (Optional)

Uncomment the line in .husky/commit-msg:

pnpm exec commitlint --edit $1

4. Impact on Release Automation

Adding commitizen should have no negative impact on the release.yml workflow for these reasons:

• Commitizen is a developer tool that helps create properly formatted commit messages
• It doesn't change the commit message format, just makes it easier to create compliant messages
• The existing semantic-release setup will continue to work the same way
• Better formatted commits may actually improve the automated release notes

The current issue with commitlint in the automation appears to be that the hook is disabled (commented out). This suggests there might have been conflicts with automated commits during the release process. We have two options:

1. Keep commitlint disabled in hooks but use commitizen to guide developers
2. Re-enable commitlint and configure it to ignore certain automated commits

5. Usage

After implementation, developers can create commits using:

pnpm commit

This will launch an interactive prompt to guide them through creating a conventional commit.

Recommendations

1. Start with commitizen without enforcing commitlint:

   • This provides guidance without blocking commits that don't comply
   • Developers get the benefit of the interactive tool
   • The release automation won't be affected

2. Document usage in CONTRIBUTING.md:

   • Add instructions for using pnpm commit
   • Explain the benefits of following the convention

3. Consider enabling commitlint later:

   • Once the team is comfortable with commitizen
   • May need to configure bypass mechanisms for automated commits

Would you like me to proceed with implementing this plan or make any adjustments first?

[bhouston]

I guess we should update the README.md or CONTRIBUTOR.md to include that people should use the pnpm commit command to make new commits. Is there anything we should change for the vscode setup or recommend vscode extensions?

/mycoder can you make a PR out of this? Thank you!

[github-actions]

I've implemented the plan for adopting Commitizen as requested:

1. Installed commitizen and cz-conventional-changelog as dev dependencies
2. Added a commit script to package.json: pnpm commit
3. Added commitizen configuration to package.json
4. Updated CONTRIBUTING.md to include information about using commitizen
5. Updated README.md to mention the pnpm commit command

All changes have been committed to a new branch feature/add-commitizen-189 and pushed to the repository. The branch is ready for review and can be merged via a PR.

The changes allow developers to create properly formatted commit messages using the interactive prompt by running:

pnpm commit

As recommended in the plan, commitlint remains disabled in the hooks for now to avoid conflicts with automated commits during the release process.

Note: I attempted to create a PR automatically but encountered permission issues. You can create a PR from the branch feature/add-commitizen-189 to complete this task.