Make first-time encounters easier for contributors

[marionebl]

First time contributors of projects using commitlint run into our checks unprepared.

This increases friction at a point critical for every OSS project, up to the point where commit messages are lost:

• fix: read config file before defaulting script parameter remy/nodemon#1110 (comment)
• get rid of commitlint googleapis/cloud-trace-nodejs#543
• chore: backoff from using commitlint google/gts#8
• A plea to abolish commit hooks uPortal-Attic/uportal-app-framework#535

We should do more to make contributing as easy as possible when commitlint is used

1. @commitlint/template. Will prepend commit messages with example messages generated from our config. Idea snatched from fix: read config file before defaulting script parameter remy/nodemon#1110 (comment), example: lennym/commit-template. This introduces a second husky commit hook, increasing install complexity. Decide if commitlint init should set this when implemented: https://github.com/marionebl/commitlint/issues/48

2. commitlint restore: Let users restore commit messages that failed the tests for repeated edits. Theoretically we could even create a preparecommitmsg hook to read that from an agreed-upon place?

3. commitlintbot: Support commitlintbot to become the go-to tool for projects opting for linting on PR/Squashing level only. This approach moves the burden of commit conventions to project maintainers entirely.

[ChristianMurphy]

An official GitHub integration (like commitlintbot) would be the most valuable IMO. ⭐
Reading through CI logs to look for what when wrong in the commit format is not an optimal user experience.

commitlint restore and @commitlint/template both sound like nice improvements as well. 👍

[emrox]

as mentioned at HH.js yesterday: one way could use a .git-commit-template.txt

Unfortunately I don't know a way to do it on repository level, so a user has to enable it manually
with git config commit.template ~/.git-commit-template.txt (or git config --global commit.template ~/.git-commit-template.txt) to specify a path

Here is a example for a .git-commit-template.txt: https://gist.github.com/Linell/bd8100c4e04348c7966d

[davidmsibley]

👍 for commitlintbot and squashing. The pull request level is the right place to deal with this. To me, it's the maintainer's job to groom the PR so that it fits in to the upstream repo.

[zwif]

Any news about commitlint restore? Is (how?) it possible to configure such a functionality at the moment?