Improving the Quality of Commit Messages in Students' Projects

TL;DR

This study enhances commit message quality in students' projects by modifying GitHub Desktop to include specific message requirements, resulting in more informative, clear, and longer messages.

Contribution

It introduces a practical modification to GitHub Desktop that effectively nudges students to write better commit messages, improving communication and documentation.

Findings

Improved informativeness of commit messages

Increased clarity and length of messages

Effective use of nudging in software tools

Abstract

Commit messages play a crucial role in collaborative software development. They provide a clear and concise description of the changes made to the source code. However, many commit messages among students' projects lack useful information. This is a concern, as low-quality commit messages can negatively impact communication of software development and future maintenance. To address this issue, this research aims to help students write high-quality commit messages by "nudging" them in the right direction. We modified the GitHub Desktop application by incorporating specific requirements for commit messages, specifically "what" and "why" parts. To test whether this affects the quality of commit messages, we divided students from an Information Retrieval class into two groups, with one group using the modified application and the other using other interfaces. The results show that the quality of commit messages is improved in terms of informativeness, clearness, and length.