A GitHub action that checks that commit messages match a regex pattern. The action is able to act on pull request and push events and check the pull request title and body, or the commit message of the commits of a push.

On pull requests the title and body are concatenated, delimited by two line breaks.

Designed to be very flexible in usage, you can split checks into various workflows, use action types on pull request to listen on, define branches for pushes etc. etc.

See also action definition and the following example workflow.

More information about pattern and flags can be found in the JavaScript reference.

flags is optional and defaults to gm.

excludeDescription, excludeTitle and checkAllCommitMessages are optional. Default behavior is to include the description and title and not check pull request commit messages.

name: 'Commit Message Check'
on:
  pull_request:
    types:
      - opened
      - edited
      - reopened
      - synchronize
  pull_request_target:
    types:
      - opened
      - edited
      - reopened
      - synchronize
  push:
    branches:
      - main
      - 'releases/*'

jobs:
  check-commit-message:
    name: Check Commit Message
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Check Commit Type
        uses: gsactions/commit-message-checker@v1
        with:
          pattern: '\[[^]]+\] .+$'
          flags: 'gm'
          error: 'Your first line has to contain a commit type like "[BUGFIX]".'
      - name: Check Line Length
        uses: gsactions/commit-message-checker@v1
        with:
          pattern: '^[^#].{74}'
          error: 'The maximum line length of 74 characters is exceeded.'
          excludeDescription: 'true' # optional: this excludes the description body of a pull request
          excludeTitle: 'true' # optional: this excludes the title of a pull request
          checkAllCommitMessages: 'true' # optional: this checks all commits associated with a pull request
          accessToken: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # github access token is only required if checkAllCommitMessages is true
      - name: Check for Resolves / Fixes
        uses: gsactions/commit-message-checker@v1
        with:
          pattern: '^.+(Resolves|Fixes): \#[0-9]+$'
          error: 'You need at least one "Resolves|Fixes: #<issue number>" line.'

Most of the questions being asked here are not about bugs or missing features in this action, but about not enough information about what is going on in the background. A good first starting point is to enable debug logging for the action, which can be accomplished by adding secrets to your repository. After that, many additional information will appear in the logs and you should be able to set up your configuration properly.

There are some really good tools that you can use to set up your pattern properly for your needs. My favorite tool is https://regexr.com/ which works very well with this action.

If you need additional support, please head to the GitHub Discussions of this repository.

git clone https://github.com/gsactions/commit-message-checker.git
npm install
npm run build

That's it, just start editing the sources...

Below is a list of commands you will probably find useful during the development cycle.

Builds the package to the lib folder.

Runs Prettier on .ts and .tsx files and fixes errors.

Runs Prettier on .ts and .tsx files without fixing errors.

Runs Eslint on .ts and .tsx files.

Bundles the package to the dist folder.

Runs Jest test suites.

Runs all the above commands.

More information about debugging GitHub Actions can be found at https://github.com/actions/toolkit/blob/main/docs/action-debugging.md.

The secrets ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG and ACTIONS_RUNNER_DEBUG are both set to true in the main repository.

This project is released under the terms of the MIT License