Check if valid string is valid commit message

[jimisola]

Is it possible to use git-cliff to check if a string would be a valid commit message according to the configuration?

[ognis1205]

Hey, thanks for starting the discussion.

Could you elaborate on what you're trying to achieve?

Are you looking to validate the commit message before creating it, something similar to what Commitizen does?

Since git-cliff is primarily a changelog generator, my understanding is that it doesn't provide validation capabilities out of the box. In this case, it might make sense to combine git-cliff's configuration with a tool like Commitizen or another commit linting tool.

[jimisola]

We would like to use git-cliff to make sure that PR titles are match conventional commit messages so that when they're merged into main the PR will be compliant for when git-cliff generates the changelog. If we do with this another tool then we don't have a Single Source of Truth and we risk discrepancies between git-cliff's configuration and that other tool.

[orhun]

Hello, I recommend using action-semantic-pull-request for this. You can see how we are doing this at @ratatui in this workflow. It also leaves a comment on the PR if it is not following the conventional commit guidelines.

If we do with this another tool then we don't have a Single Source of Truth and we risk discrepancies between git-cliff's configuration and that other tool.

I understand that, but as @ognis1205 already pointed out, git-cliff is primarily a changelog generation tool and we currently do not provide any "check" capability that you can integrate externally. With that being said, I think the closest thing we have now to that is the fail_on_unmatched configuration option. (Maybe you could hack something together combining that with the --context flag.)

When it comes to discrepancies, they should not happen unless you are following a format outside of the conventional commit guidelines I believe. What kind of commits do you currently have?

Alternatively, check out cocogitto, I think it might have the feature you're looking for.

[jimisola]

Thank you for you input. I'll change so that git-cliff is focused on generating the changelog and use another action for PR titles.

Do you have any experience of https://github.com/Ezard/semantic-prs - it handles both commits and PRs.

[orhun]

Thank you for you input. I'll change so that git-cliff is focused on generating the changelog and use another action for PR titles.

Happy to help if you run into any configuration issues with git-cliff!

Do you have any experience of https://github.com/Ezard/semantic-prs - it handles both commits and PRs.

Not really, I haven't tried it before myself.