[VieElm]

The 50 character limit on the first line of a commit message really bugs me. I try to stay within 50 characters but sometimes I don't care. I can't always fit what I want in 50 chars and adding a second line can be too much. This is the worst kind of thing around tooling, these types of conventions, in this case because that's how Torvald's wants kernel git commits formatted. I am not committing to anything Torvald's cares about.

[jsmthrowaway]

The 50 character convention has nothing to do with Linus Torvalds.

[brazzledazzle]

I've seen a lot of posts and comments about the 50 character convention but I'm not sure I've ever seen a reason for that specific number. What is the reason for that anyway?

[mikekchar]

It appears to originate with Tim Pope: http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messa...

Reading between the lines, it seems that the 50 character limit is to accommodate commands like "git log --pretty=oneline" and "git rebase --interactive" on an 80 column terminal. He also recommends 72 columns for any subsequent text because git makes a left margin of 4 characters and it looks balanced if you also have a right margin of 4 characters (80 - 8 = 72).

As someone who actually uses an 80 column terminal, I appreciate this practice. Probably younger people with good eyes won't be able to understand the reasoning behind it ;-)

[VieElm]

> Probably younger people with good eyes won't be able to understand the reasoning behind it ;-)

Serious question, have you tried reading glasses? You don't have to just deal with bad eyes as you age, you can wear reading glasses. This what I do now.