== Commit Rules ==

=== Using sensible commit messages ===

When committing your changes to MacPorts' central port tree using subversion it is good practice to use properly formatted commit messages.

Think about others reading the [/timeline timeline]. Here you want to see on first glance which port got modified, therefore the recommended format for commit messages is this:
{{{
PORTNAME: COMMENT
}}}
Here a reader of MacPorts' timeline can quickly get the most important information, i.e. ''which'' port got changed and ''why''.

A real-life example is:
{{{
zmq: Fix build on darwin <= 10, closes #40663
}}}
Note that references to [wiki:Tickets Trac tickets] can be inserted using the '#' as well as references to certain commits of the MacPorts repository by using 'r' (e.g. r111866).

If a change affects multiple ports, list all affected ports. If a change affects a large number of ports, listing their names is not necessary.