Proposal: consider conventional commits + squash merge for go-libp2p

[p-shahi]

Proposal

Consider using conventional commits: https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/#summary and squash merging PRs for go-libp2p

Motivation

Both of these improve commit history quality:

• Commit messages formatted with "feat", "fix", "chore", "docs", etc make it easier for maintainers, contributors/users to wade through the commit history. They tell what the commit was related to at a glance. This can augment the current style where the core component is prepended to the commit messages and give additional context.
  • We already do this in some cases see: fix: autorelay: treat static relays as just another peer source #1875
  • Can enable use to use Release please (like rust-libp2p) https://github.com/googleapis/release-please
• Squash merging will help tidy up the commit history.
  • this can be done by doing "squash and merge" through the GitHub UI
  • When diffing two branches/tags here: v0.23.4...master it makes it easier to read. Good article here: https://blog.dnsimple.com/2019/01/two-years-of-squash-merge/
• Help automate

References

• Conventional commits
  • Both rust-libp2p (Decision required: Change commit messages to "conventional commits" rust-libp2p#3054) and js-libp2p use this. Providing us added motivation to adopt this.

Thoughts: @MarcoPolo @marten-seemann

[marten-seemann]

I'm not sure I see the value in this. The most important thing is to specify the component you're changing, as we've been doing ever since we made go-libp2p a mono-repo.

We're already using squash merges for the vast majority of our PRs. In some cases, when the commit history is very clean, we also might do a "normal" merge.

[MarcoPolo]

I think this is a good idea.

We already use squash merges, but it would be great to enforce this.

For conventional commits, I would love to see this. Especially the tooling that can give folks context whether something is a breaking api change or not at a glance.

[MarcoPolo]

When libp2p/github-mgmt#81 is closed, I suggest we try this for a bit. If we can enforce having the component name in there as well that would be a nice bonus.

[p-shahi]

Here's the PR to enforce conventional commits in go-libp2p: libp2p/github-mgmt#125

I suggest we enable this after 0.26.0

@marten-seemann are you open to trying it out?

[p-shahi]

Closing per: libp2p/github-mgmt#125 (comment)