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Document care: as an alias to chore:
#168
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Originally created by @fanf on GitHub (Jan 27, 2023).
Even if not part of the core specification and not always self-explaining (see https://github.com/conventional-commits/conventionalcommits.org/issues/493 and especially https://github.com/FlowingCode/DevelopmentConventions/issues/11),
chore:is widely used as a general purpose tag for "maintenance things related the code base and its ecossytem, not covered by other tags".Standard examples are updating library dependencies, cleaning up indents or comments, change related to developer team tooling, etc.
I also saw it used in a several place as a general purpose tag for things related to arch, refactoring, etc when the number of tags used in the project is small (ie restricted to
fix,feat, (build- not always there,) andchore)I would like to advocate for the use of
carein place of, are at least as an alternative to,chore. I do understand that the prior-use ofchoreis huge and other may/won't agree with the reasons exposed at the end, so it could just be having it listed in the point '4', rephrasing it to (for ex:):I also do understand that it's up to everyone to use whatever they want to use in their code base, but the fact that a tag type is not quoted in site makes it ignored by most tooling and out of the horizon of possible choice for most people.
Reason:
chorebears with it the fact that it is something that needs to be done but is a pain, and that you won't like doing it. It may even be more negative in some foreign language, like in French where its translation "corvée" was a totally injust and painful taxe on the poorers for their lord, bordering with slavery (imposed free work controlled by a master blurring the lines of weither the serf were the possession of the master or noy). Even withouy going that far, in French corvée remains an extremelly negative term felt like a punishment done by the poorer/less valued in the standard western/patriarchal value system (I think/believe in English, and esp US English, it lost most of that old meaning and is less negative, more like a routine task/ daily job to keep things tiddy).But in the case of software, we clearly know why we do these things, and why they are important, and it's cool to do them, and nice, and we can be prood of them: it's because we want a sustainable code base, and because we care about the quality of the code and general developer experience.
We care that other developers will find a well working IDE configuration, we care that the conventions, even the one not automatically checked, are respected and corrected when not, we care that the license headers are present, we care that the depencies are up to date to minise rot and security exposition, we care that the comments are accurate even if we didn't change anything in the code logic and were just reading the sources, in the "let it in better shape than when you came" way of practicing.
For all that, the kind of changes generally associated to the
chore:tag should be linked to acare:tag.(amazingly, we don't have a word for "care" in French, but only periphrasis...)
@TristanCottam commented on GitHub (Apr 15, 2023):
This reminds me of the master/slave controversy, which I can empathize with. However, the word "chore" doesn't have the same etymological burden as the French word "corvée" (which, as a French-speaking Belgian, I only consider as neutral at best, and dreadful at worst — I had no idea about its original meaning). Furthermore, while software development is awesome, "chore" commits tend to be just that. "We care" indeed, just like we care for our guests to find themselves in a tidy environment when they visit, which is why we do our chores 🙂.
Soin!
@JohelEGP commented on GitHub (Apr 15, 2023):
The linked commit doesn't include
chore:, so the text is out of date.dff6ee3272removedchore:. It really is overused. Just don't mention it.@TristanCottam commented on GitHub (Apr 15, 2023):
I did notice, a while back actually, and could understand why. Do you reckon it should indeed be abolished altogether? Or is it just massively overused?
@JohelEGP commented on GitHub (Apr 15, 2023):
style:was also removed:c1bc070b40. For this one, the link is out of date, as the linked commit includes it.@TristanCottam commented on GitHub (Apr 15, 2023):
Do you have any idea?
It apparently wasn't included in the commit parser configuration, but why wasn't it added to the parser rather than removed from the documentation? Is it because of CI style checking, and confidence in the fact that their style wouldn't change?
@JohelEGP commented on GitHub (Apr 15, 2023):
To answer both. I think there are more fitting types. In particular, a

style:is likely to overlap withrefactor:. If there isn't, you can invent your own, becausechore:can set a bad example. Rely on it, and a repository will likely not see more fitting types invented for subsets ofchore:. Remember Why Use Conventional Commits.@TristanCottam commented on GitHub (Apr 15, 2023):
Isn't
stylespecific to formatting-related changes, which don't affect the code's meaning?I neglected the importance of inventing new types. Is it considered that sub-types of
chorecan't be made universal enough to be standardized, or has no one gotten around to doing so yet?What a you referring to?
@LemmingAvalanche commented on GitHub (Mar 20, 2024):
A chore is also a task that you have to do again and again at certain intervals. Like cleaning the house (allegedly). Do you like cleaning the house? Maybe. But it’s still a chore in that sense.