I quite like my current system.
One word naming the topic or area or system that was changed, then colon separated with a very short sentence giving a summary of the changes, then two lines later (if necessary), a bullet point list of the most important/noteworthy changes, then an explanation for why a thing was changed (if any change in the commit warrants it).
Honestly, I know most people won't go beyond the first line, but I do find the rest of it very helpful for my own work if I have to go through the commits sometime in the future.
It also helps that most of it is optional and I decide on a case by case basis whether just the first line is sufficient or I need the whole thing.
I see in the comments people questioning the purpose of a bullet point list, but it actually is helpful. I don't want to have to check the diff for every single commit if I don't have to. It's time consuming. If a commit message can tell me immediately if it touched something I'm interested in, that's a big time and effort and mental bandwidth saver.
Example:
auth: Refactored and fixed edge cases
- Fixed incorrect handling of token groups
- Added role enum to replace static strings
One word naming the topic or area or system that was changed, then colon separated with a very short sentence giving a summary of the changes, then two lines later (if necessary), a bullet point list of the most important/noteworthy changes, then an explanation for why a thing was changed (if any change in the commit warrants it).
Honestly, I know most people won't go beyond the first line, but I do find the rest of it very helpful for my own work if I have to go through the commits sometime in the future.
It also helps that most of it is optional and I decide on a case by case basis whether just the first line is sufficient or I need the whole thing.
I see in the comments people questioning the purpose of a bullet point list, but it actually is helpful. I don't want to have to check the diff for every single commit if I don't have to. It's time consuming. If a commit message can tell me immediately if it touched something I'm interested in, that's a big time and effort and mental bandwidth saver.
Example:
auth: Refactored and fixed edge cases
- Fixed incorrect handling of token groups
- Added role enum to replace static strings