• Ignore "Merge into" commits. GitHub Actions creates merge commits for Pull Requests that do not need to be validated.

• Detect issue references starting with "part of" for the MessageTicketNumber rule. The following now is detected as a link to an issue.

  Part of https://website.om/org/repo/issues/123

Added

• Add --install-hook CLI option. Call Lintje with this option to install a Lintje in the selected Git hook.

  # This hook prevents making the commit if any issues are found
  lintje --install-hook commit-msg
  
  # This hook makes the commit even if Lintje finds issues
  # Amend the commit to update it and fix the issues
  lintje --install-hook post-commit
  

• Add --verbose CLI option. Print the parsed commit and branch before any issues that were found in it. This replaces the commit and branch output that printed the internal representation of these objects, when --debug was set.
• Print build target in --version CLI flag. When lintje --version is run it will now print the target for which it was built. This helps with debugging which release build was installed. The lintje -V shorthand will still only print the version number.

Changed

• The MessageTicketNumber rule will no longer add an issue if a SubjectTicketNumber issue is already found. It will not hint about adding a ticket number to the message body, if one is present in the subject.
• The MessageSkipBuildTag rule will no longer add a hint if a SubjectBuildTag issue is already found. It will not hint about adding a "skip ci" build tag to the message body, if one is present in the subject.
• The MessageLineLength rule now detects more protocols as URLs like "ftp" and "ssh". Lines with such URLs will no longer trigger an issue about the line being too long.
• Use short links to link to rule documentation from the Lintje output. Instead of https://lintje.dev/docs/rules/<type>/#<rule name anchor> it will now print something like: https://r.lintje.dev/r/<RuleName>. For example: https://r.lintje.dev/r/SubjectLength.

Fixed

• Fix detection of ignored Lintje rules in the commit's trailer lines section. Lines starting with lintje:disable RuleName are no longer ignored and the disabled rules will not trigger any validation.

Added

• Ignore Git revert commits made by git revert. These commits will no longer be validated by Lintje as they are usually generated and their messages not updated.
• Trailer support for commit messages. Trailers are no longer considered part of the message body and do not count towards message length and other rules. Trailers are lines at the end of the message body, like "Co-authored-by" and "Signed-off-by".
• Add MessageTrailerLine rule. This new rule checks if all "Co-authored-by", "Signed-off-by" and "Helped-by" lines are at the end of the message body. If they are not, GitHub and other tools will not recognize the line and will not credit the co-author or recognize the sign off.

Changed

• Color addition suggestions as green, previously cyan. The green color better communicates the suggestion is about an addition that should be made.
• Mark addition suggestions more clearly with the plus symbol +, and in green. Additions previously used the caret symbol ^ and bright red color, also used by errors. It is now more clear the issue is suggesting adding something to the commit message.
• Mark removal suggestions more clearly to differentiate them from errors. Instead of underlining with the caret symbol ^, which errors also use, it will now underline with the dash symbol - and uses the color yellow to highlight these changes.
• Show a suggestion in the SubjectCapitalization issue output to capitalize the first letter of the subject using the actual subject content.
• Improve help output for --hook-message-file option. It now has a more descriptive option value label.
• Add headings to help output and group similar arguments, options and flags together.

Fixed

• Remove unintended debug output on "Co-authored-by" line detection.
• Disallow the --hook-message-file to be used with a commit (range) selection argument. It would silently only parse the file specified by --hook-message-file and not lint the selected commits. These two things are incompatible. It will exit with an error when this happens. The following is no longer allowed:

  lintje --hook-message-file .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG main..develop
  

Added

• Update the SubjectTicketNumber and MessageTicketNumber rules to also match full URLs to issues, and match shorthands like #123 and org/repo#123 more accurately.
• The MessagePresence rule checks if the commit message is only a reference to a ticket or issue number, e.g. a message that is only "Closes #123" is no longer valid. Some detail about the issue should also be recorded in the commit message itself, not just the linked issue.
• Add the DiffChangeset rule, which checks for the presence of a changeset file when the repository has a .changeset or .changesets directory. If found, it will give a hint to add a changeset to the commit. Learn more about changesets.

Changed

• Update the MessageTicketNumber rule to also recognize issue keywords like "part of issue", "part of epic" and "part of project".
• Improve error messages from Lintje. When Lintje is run in a directory that's not a Git repository it will now print a more to the point message with less detail. The detailed error message including which command was run with which arguments is available behind the --debug flag.
• Improve MessagePresence rule error message to more concise.
• Don't count line breaks towards the minimum MessagePresence character count.
• Show the whole message body as context in MessagePresence issues that are about message bodies that are too short. Since they are so short Lintje can print it in full. Previously it only showed the last line which did not provide enough context in some cases.
• Don't count references to issues and ticket numbers towards the minimum message body length in the MessagePresence rule, like "Closes #123".
• Don't count co-authored-by lines towards the minimum message body length in the MessagePresence rule, like "Co-authored-by: name [email protected]".

Added

• Link to Lintje.dev from the issue output in the terminal for more documentation and examples on the website.
• Support an options file with the LINTJE_OPTIONS_PATH environment variable. This options file will be read every time Lintje is run, so there's no more need to specify flags on the CLI every time manually. Set the LINTJE_OPTIONS_PATH to a file path containing a options text file. For example /Users/tombruijn/config/lintje/options.txt file containing the content below.

  --color
  --no-hints
  

  More information can be found on the options file documentation page.

• Add the MessageSkipBuildTag hint rule to suggest adding a "[skip ci]" build tag when a commit only changes plain text files that commonly don't require a test suite, deploy or other automatic build to be run. Saves on resources, time and money. Files that are checked include: README, LICENSE and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.
• Recognize "amend!" commits, like "fixup!" commits, as to be rebased commits and trigger the RebaseCommit rule.

Changed

• Add an extra line between message body and moved ticket number at the end of the body in SubjectTicketNumber suggestions.
• Color output is turned on by default if the system supports it.
• Change the suggestions symbol from a dash (-) to a plus (+) to better indicate the suggestion is an addition.
• Rename the NeedsRebase rule to RebaseCommit to match naming with MergeCommit rule to indicate the type of commit rather than the action that needs to be taken to resolve it. The NeedsRebase name can still be used as an alias to disable the RebaseCommit rule with lintje:disable NeedsRebase. This alias will be removed eventually.

Fixed

• Better support for just initialized repositories. Lintje will no longer print an error for repositories with one commit.

Added

• Docker image: Lintje ships in a Docker image now available on Docker Hub. See the Docker image installation instructions for more information.
• Check commit messages for "Part of #123" substring for MessageTicketNumber hint. This is also accepted along with "Fixes #123" and "Closes #123".

Changed

• Print CLI flags in a most common usage based order. Flags to are opposites of each other, like --color and --no-color, are grouped together.

Added

• Introducing suggestions! Lintje will print more detailed hints to resolve errors. Rules that have been updated with suggestions are the SubjectTicketNumber and SubjectBuildTag rules.

  SubjectTicketNumber: The subject contains a ticket number
    9aa9ca2:1:10: Fix bug. Closes #123
      |
    1 | Fix bug. Closes #123
      |          ^^^^^^^^^^^ Remove the ticket number from the subject
     ~~~
    9 | Closes #123
      | ----------- Move the ticket number to the message body
  

• Introducing hints! Lintje will print messages for issues that are not necessarily errors with the new MessageTicketNumber rule, but reminders to add ticket numbers to the commit message body. Hints can be turned off with the --no-hints flag.

  MessageTicketNumber: The message body does not contain a ticket or issue number
    9aa9ca2:10:1: Commit subject
       |
     8 | Last line of the current commit message body.
     9 |
    10 | Fixes #123
       | ---------- Consider adding a reference to a ticket or issue
  

• Add color to output. Highlight important output labels, such as rule names, the underlining, and the result status. Experimental color output can be enabled with the new --color flag.

Changed

• Change "violations" to "issues" in preparation for different types issues Lintje can return in the future.

Fixed

• Improve output when a Git error is encountered.
• Reduce false positive detection for ticket numbers in branch names. Branch names with version numbers in them, like ruby-3 and elixir-1.12, are now valid.

• Ignore other rules if a commit has a MergeCommit or NeedsRebase violation. When these violations occur the commit needs to be rebased, so any other issues will hopefully be resolved in the rebase, such missing message body, or subject length. This will reduce the number of violations printed and focus on the important violations.
• The Git scissor line (for cleanup mode scissors) will not be interpreted as the commit subject line, if it's the first line in a Git commit hook file. It will instead consider the commit as having an empty subject and message body. This will prevent any unexpected violations on the scissor line when the Git commit process is aborted by removing the subject and message body from the Git commit message file.
• The Git scissor line will be interpreted as the end of every commit message. This previously only applied for the scissors cleanup mode. This improves support for git commit's --verbose flag and --cleanup option. In verbose mode the scissor line is also present in the Git commit default message content, but is not included in the committed message body.
• Don't consider trailing whitespace as part of the line length in the scissors cleanup mode.
• Improve leading empty line detection and ignore these lines in every cleanup mode except "verbatim". This way leading empty lines are not interpreted as subjects and Lintje won't print violations about those empty lines as subjects.
• Improve leading comment line detection and ignore these lines in the default/"strip" cleanup mode. This way leading comment lines are not interpreted as subjects and Lintje won't print violations about those subjects.

• Improve Unicode support for SubjectLength and MessageLineLength rules.
  • Characters with accents such as a̐ are no longer counted as two characters.
  • Double width characters now count towards a width of two.
  • Emoji with a larger display width are now counted with their display width. This means it's no longer possible to write a subject of 50 emoji in a subject, only 25 emoji that have a render with of two, for example.
• Improved violation messages.
  • When a violation of the Lintje rules are found the message that gets printed will includes more context about the problem it found. It will highlight where exactly the problem was detected in a commit subject, commit message, commit diff or branch name to make it easier to resolve the problem.

• Ignore SubjectLength rule if the subject already has a SubjectCliche violation. This reduces the number of violations that are printed when a SubjectCliche violation means writing a longer subject anyway.
• Ignore SubjectCapitalization and MessagePresence rules if the subject already has a NeedsRebase violation. To fix a NeedsRebase violation the commit needs to be rebased into the commit it's marked to fixup or squash, and there will be no need to fix the capitalization or add a message body.
• Add DiffPresence rule. This rule whether or not the commit has any changes or not. When a commit is empty, it will print a violation.
• Improve SubjectLength violation message when the subject is completely empty.
• Remove error messages from output when the commit subject is empty.
• Match more build tags in the SubjectBuildTag rule. It now also matches all tags that match the format of "[skip *]" and "[* skip]", rather than a previously fixed list of build tags.
• Match fewer substrings as ticket numbers, strings like "A-1" no longer matches.
• Ignore SubjectCapitalization rule if the subject already has a SubjectPrefix violation. This reduces the number of violations that are printed when a prefix is found in the commit, which is the violation that takes priority.

• Fix error handling for Git hook mode when no core.commentChar or commit.cleanup is configured in Git.

• Better handling of Git commands when they fail. Print an error message when a Git command fails (like calling git log) and when Git is not installed.
• Improve SubjectCliche rule to catch plurals of words (e.g. "fix tests") and check for more subject prefixes like "add fix", "update code", "remove file".
• Improve wording of the SubjectCapitalization violation message.
• Add branch name validation.
  • Can be disabled with the --no-branch flag.
  • New BranchNameTicketNumber rule to scan branch names for ticket numbers, and fix-### formats. Ticket numbers are accepted as long as the name is more than a combination of a prefix and number.
  • New BranchNameLength rule checks for a minimum branch name length of four characters.
  • New BranchNamePunctuation rule checks for a branch names starting or ending with punctuation.
  • New BranchNameCliche rule checks for a branch names is a cliché. "fix-bug" or "add-test" branches are no longer accepted.
• Fix emoji false positives in SubjectPunctuation. It will no longer match on numbers and * and # as emoji at the start of a subject.
• Ignore commits made by GitHub bots. Project members can't always ensure that all bots follow the rules set by Lintje.
• Add Debian installation method. More information in the installation docs.
• Print the singular "violation" label when Lintje only finds one violation.
• Print number of ignored commits, if any commits are ignored.

⚠️ Please check out version 0.4.1, for an updated release with bug fixes.

• Improve MergeCommit rule to fail on less types of merge commits. A local merge commit into the repository's base branch is accepted, but a merge commit merging a remote branch or two non-base-branch into one another are not. In the future this may warn on certain local merges again.
• Ignore merge commits for tags. These commits are local merges that will be ignored for checks for now. They may trigger the MergeCommit rule in the future, when local merges can be detected.
• Fix GitLab merge commit detection, to ignore those commits. It previously only scanned for Merge Request reference IDs, but now scans for the full org/repo!id reference used by GitLab in Merge Request merge commits.
• Better detect GitLab Merge Request references. Update the SubjectTicketNumber rule to also detect references to Merge Requests in GitLab that uses exclamation marks ! instead of #.

• Add SubjectBuildTag rule to check for "skip ci" tags in the subject. These tags should be moved to the message body.
• Add SubjectPrefix rule to explicitly check for prefixes in subjects, like "fix: bug", "fix!: bug", "fix(scope): bug", and suggest to remove them.
• Update SubjectCliche to catch more types of clichés, such as only "fix". The check is now also case insensitive, so "Fix", "fix" and "FIX" are all caught.

• Add MessageEmptyFirstLine rule that checks if the line after the subject line is empty. If it's not empty that line is considered part of the commit's subject.
• Validate commits without a subject. Previously these commits would be ignored and Lintje would not validate them, missing very undescriptive commits.
• Add Alpine Linux musl compatible build.
• Don't validate commit's which are squash commits from GitHub Pull Requests. It's not recommended to rewrite merge commits after they've been made, so they will be ignored.
• Expand SubjectPunctuation rule to also scan for punctuation at the start of the subject, not just the end. Subjects should not start with punctuation.
• Expand SubjectPunctuation rule to also scan for emoji at the start of the subject. Subjects should not start with an emoji as a prefix.
• Expand SubjectPunctuation rule to check for more Unicode punctuation.
• Add Microsoft Windows release build.

Initial release.