Improving the Quality of Commit Messages in Students' Projects
Iris Ma, Cristina V. Lopes
TL;DR
The paper addresses poor commit message quality in student projects and tests a lightweight UI intervention that reframes commit descriptions as two parts: 'what' and 'why'. By modifying GitHub Desktop to require and label these parts, the study compares a modified interface against the official tool and command-line interfaces within a large Information Retrieval course. Results show the modified UI substantially increases the presence of both parts, improves informativeness and length of messages, and reduces meaningless commits, with strong statistical evidence. The approach is resource-efficient, scalable, and holds promise for improving software engineering practices in educational settings and beyond.
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.