mini-post about using tags in git commits.
Tags
In git a commit message is structured in a first subject line, an empty newline and more text making the body of the message.
The subject can be split in two components tags and the actual subject.
tag1: tag2: Commit Subject
A body with more information spanning
multiple lines.
The tags can be used to pin the general area the patch is impacting, e.g:
ui: Change widget foo
Usage
When you are looking at the history using git log having tags helps a lot digging out old commits, for example: you remember some commit added some timeout system in something related to the component foo.
git log --oneline | grep foo:
Would help figuring out the commit.
This usage is the best when working with not well structured codebase, since alternatively you can do
git log --oneline module/component
If you use separate directories for each module and component within the module.
PS: This is one of the reasons plaid focuses a lot on tags and I complain a lot when tags are not used.