When committing with Source Tree is there a way to create a Jira issue by keyword?

[monkeypunch]

There are times when I commit code with Source Tree (or Git) and I mention the JIRA issues in the comments like this (so they get linked with all Atlassian products):

PROJECT-121 Add link to header text
PROJECT-143 Removed border around
PROJECT-303 Something else

But then there are a few other changes that I needed to make that I want to there to be a record for.

So my commit comments usually ends like this:

PROJECT-121 Add link to header text
PROJECT-143 Removed border around
PROJECT-303 Something else
- Added new functionality to form
- Removed text limit on message box
- Found minor typo or incorrect color used in form

So is there a way or a tag I can add to create a new JIRA issue in the comments like this:

PROJECT-121 Add link to header text
PROJECT-143 Removed border around
PROJECT-303 Something else
- Added new functionality to form #createJiraIssue
- Removed text limit on message box #createJiraIssue
- Incorrect color used in form #createJiraIssue

This would be really helpful because then there can be a record for these changes and people can search and raise issues and add comments on these and they would be in the system (if we ever needed them) and I wouldn't have to go through the process of creating them manually. Does this make sense? These are usually minor enough changes but you still want a record for them. We have people that go through and verify commits and resolve and close issues. This would create a record for them that they could also fill out with more information if need be. This type of situation occurs on almost every commit. So it would be a huge benefit to developers wanting to work on and focus on code than logging into Jira to create issues and so on.

[KieranA · Accepted solution]

Hey there,

We do have plans for better integration with JIRA in the future. We have a couple of issues open for this here and here which are worth checking out. Feel free to add comments or create a new issue with further input.

That said, if you want to link the JIRA issue to commits and vice-versa you'd need to use a post-commit hook to get the commit for the issue (if, for example, you wanted to create a comment on the issue with a commit that has been made). Otherwise you can use a pre-commit hook and have a simple script which does a POST request to JIRA containing the details necessary to create an issue based on the commit contents.

You just rename the "pre-commit.sample" file to "pre-commit" (in your .git/hooks folder) and then put whatever you want in it as it runs as a shell script. In your case you'd perhaps want to follow this guide to creating a JIRA issue through a POST request. To get the data out you'll need from the commit I'd highly recommend this article which shows what env vars get set.

Hope that helps

[monkeypunch]

Great! Any solution from Atlassian will be better than my patchwork. Thanks

[monkeypunch]

From what I found, and I'm not an expert, is you can change a commit message soon after it's committed but not after others have committed, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179123/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/457379/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git-ive-pushed. You can amend a commit message locally before pushing to live. It sounds like it could work.

[monkeypunch]

That's a good point. You would need a precommit hook that would create the issues and then update the comment like you said. I think Git allows you to update comments after a commit, I'll check. If that isn't possible it would be acceptable (to me) to create a new commit that added issue keys in the next comment. I wasn't at first concerned with adding the keys to comment but now that you mention it it sounds like these issues may get lost without it.

[Wim Deblauwe]

How would you trace those issues back to the commit? Since the issues still need to be created, there is no JIRA key. Or you would need to install a kind of pre-commit hook that would update the comments. Don't know if that is possible.