[xorcist]

Jira contains discussion and requirements. It can meander for months before the right action is chosen. It can be important to have background, but it replaces the mailing list discussion that led up to the change, it does not replace the commit message.

The commit message is writen in retrospect and is written for someone with the code in front of them to explain why this change was made, and why it was done in this particular way.

If your commit message is too short then than is your problem right there. The easy fix is you taking five seconds out of your busy day to save an hour for you readers.

Have you seen how commit messages are written for git itself, or for the Linux kernel? Let me help you by linking the currently latest commit in the github mirror of git, it is not chosen to be particularly good or bad but is pretty representative of how git developers write commit messages: https://github.com/git/git/commit/b809304101

As you can see, without knowing much of the specifics of the code, we can get an idea why this change was made the way it was. There is a certain art to writing short and concise commit messages, but the same is true for code itself. Some, but comparably very little, practice is required.