gopass-mirror/docs/conventions.md

Conventions

Normative reference for commit messages, versioning, branch and tag names, and file naming.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the contribution workflow and docs/hacking.md for the development environment.

1. Commit messages

Commit subjects follow Conventional Commits 1.0.0.

1.1 Format

<type>[(<scope>)][!]: <description>

[optional body]

[optional footers]

Rules:

• Limit the subject line to 72 characters.
• Write the description in the imperative mood: "add", not "adds" or "added".
• Start the description in lowercase. Do not end it with a period.
• Include a Signed-off-by: footer in every commit, as required by CONTRIBUTING.md. Conventional Commits governs the subject line; the Developer Certificate of Origin adds a trailer. Both apply.
• Write the pull request title as a valid Conventional Commit.

The pull request title requirement follows from the merge strategy. Pull requests are squash-merged: pull request #3489, titled fix: Avoid NPE when attempting to edit a non-existing secret, landed on master as the single-parent commit eb1368e4 with the subject fix: Avoid NPE when attempting to edit a non-existing secret (#3489). The pull request title, not the individual commit subjects, is the string that reaches CHANGELOG.md.

1.2 Types

This list is exhaustive. Reject any other type.

Type	Meaning	SemVer impact	Changelog section
feat	New user-visible capability	MINOR	Added
fix	Bug fix	PATCH	Fixed
security	Security fix or hardening	PATCH	Security
perf	Performance improvement, no behaviour change	PATCH	Changed
refactor	Internal restructuring, no behaviour change	PATCH	Changed
revert	Reverts a previous commit	PATCH	Changed
deps	Dependency version change	PATCH	Changed
docs	Documentation only	none	omitted
test	Tests only	none	omitted
build	Build system: Makefile, goreleaser, Dockerfile	none	omitted
ci	GitHub Actions, linter configuration, workflows	none	omitted
chore	Housekeeping that fits nothing above	none	omitted

Two entries extend the set suggested by the specification:

• security populates the Security section of the changelog, which Keep a Changelog defines as a first-class category. Five commits since 2025-01-01 already use it.
• deps is the preferred type for hand-written dependency commits. Accept chore(deps) as well: Dependabot emits it, and 147 of the 344 commit subjects since 2025-01-01 carry the chore type, nearly all of them dependency bumps.

The following appear as commit types in the history and are not types. Use them as scopes: otp (2 commits since 2025-01-01), age, bug, fscopy, and openbsd (1 each).

1.3 Scopes

The scope is optional. Prefer to supply one. Do not invent scopes; omit the scope when none fits. Omit the scope for a change spanning several areas rather than listing more than one.

Commands — the 42 top-level subcommands: 40 registered by (*Action).GetCommands in internal/action/commands.go, plus pwgen from internal/action/pwgen and completion, both added by getCommands in main.go:

alias audit cat clone completion config convert copy create delete doctor edit
env find fsck fscopy fsmove generate grep history init insert link list merge
mounts move otp process pwgen rcs recipients reorg secret-service setup show sum
sync templates unclip update version

Backends: age, gpg, plain, cryptfs, fossilfs, fs, gitfs, gogit, jjfs

Subsystems: action, audit, backend, cache, completion, config, create, cui, editor, hashsum, hook, notify, out, queue, recipients, reminder, store, store/leaf, store/root, tpl, tree, updater

Public API: pkg/gopass, api, secrets, appdir, clipboard, ctxutil, debug, fsutil, otp, passkey, pinentry, protect, pwgen, qrcon, set, tempfile, termio

Meta: deps, release, changelog, docs, adr, ci, build

Write pkg/gopass out in full as a scope. Public-API changes must be greppable against the A-12 stability contract.

1.4 Breaking changes

This repository has two independent compatibility surfaces. Mark them differently. Do not conflate them.

Surface broken	Marker	Version impact
gopass CLI: commands, flags, output format, exit codes, config keys, store format	! after the type or scope, and a BREAKING CHANGE: footer	MAJOR
Go module pkg/gopass only: an exported symbol removed or changed	a PKG-BREAK: footer, no !	none; MINOR at most
Both	! + BREAKING CHANGE: + PKG-BREAK:	MAJOR

Do not mark a module-only break with !. No CLI user can observe such a change, and ! demands a major release.

Example of a module-only break, per A-12:

refactor(pkg/gopass): drop Store.GetRevision in favour of Store.History

Deprecated since 1.17.0; the two-minor / three-month window has elapsed.

PKG-BREAK: pkg/gopass: remove Store.GetRevision, use Store.History instead
Signed-off-by: Your Name <your@example.com>

The PKG-BREAK: footer is the machine-readable form of the [PKG-BREAK] changelog tag mandated by A-12.

1.5 Changelog control footers

Footer	Effect
Changelog-Section: Added|Changed|Deprecated|Removed|Fixed|Security	Overrides the type-to-section mapping. Required for Removed and Deprecated, which have no corresponding commit type.
RELEASE_NOTES=<text> or RELEASE_NOTES=n/a	Overrides the bullet text, or suppresses the entry.
PKG-BREAK: <text>	Emits a [PKG-BREAK]-prefixed bullet.

2. Versioning

This project follows Semantic Versioning 2.0.0.

2.1 Covered by SemVer

SemVer applies to the gopass command line interface and its observable behaviour: subcommands, flags and their aliases, the stdout and stderr contracts, JSON output schemas, exit codes (docs/exit-codes.md), configuration keys (docs/config.md), the on-disk store format, and the generated shell completions and man page.

2.2 Not covered by SemVer

The Go module github.com/gopasspw/gopass carries no independent semver guarantees. pkg/gopass is governed by A-12 and by the package documentation in pkg/gopass/doc.go, which declare it best-effort stable:

• Additive changes — new exported symbols, new functional-option parameters — may appear in any release.
• Breaking changes — removal or signature change of an exported symbol, change to an interface method set or to error semantics — require a [PKG-BREAK] entry in CHANGELOG.md and a deprecation window of two minor releases or three months, whichever is longer.

2.3 Precedence

Release a change that breaks only pkg/ consumers as MINOR or PATCH. Do not bump MAJOR for it. Release a change that breaks CLI users as MAJOR regardless of its pkg/ impact.

2.4 Pre-releases

Use vX.Y.Z-rc.N only: SemVer pre-release identifiers, dot-separated, numeric. Sign the tag. Cut it from the merged release/vX.Y.Z-rc.N branch. See docs/releases.md.

3. Branch names

<type>/<kebab-slug>[-<issue>]

• Use a commit type from §1.2 as <type>.
• Restrict the slug to [a-z0-9-], plus the single / separator. Use no spaces and no underscores. Limit the whole name to 60 characters.
• Append the issue number when one exists: refactor/separate-storage-rcs-3411.
• Do not create these prefixes by hand; the release automation owns them: release/vX.Y.Z and release/vX.Y.Z-rc.N, created by helpers/release/main.go, and prep/vX.Y.Z, documented in docs/releases.md.
• Do not push feature branches to gopasspw/gopass. Work on a fork.

4. Tag names

• Name releases vX.Y.Z and pre-releases vX.Y.Z-rc.N.
• Sign every tag (git tag -s).
• Create no other tags in this repository.

.github/workflows/autorelease.yml triggers on push: tags: 'v*'. helpers/release/main.go strips the leading v and parses the remainder as semver.

5. File names

5.1 General rules

• Use lowercase kebab-case, restricted to [a-z0-9._-].
• Use no spaces.
• Zero-pad any numeric component that participates in lexical ordering.
• Prefix with YYYY-MM-DD when chronological order matters.
• Order components from most general to most specific, left to right.

5.2 Architecture decision records

Name records docs/adr/A-NN-<kebab-slug>.md, with NN zero-padded to two digits.

• Write the H1 as # A-NN: <Title>, matching the file name.
• Open the record with a **Status:** line — proposed, accepted, deferred, implemented, partially implemented, or superseded by A-NN — and a **Source:** line.
• Never reuse a number. Supersede a decision by writing a new record.
• Update docs/adr/README.md in the same commit that adds or supersedes a record.

5.3 Other documentation

• Name command specifications docs/commands/<command>.md, where the file name is exactly the command name.
• Name backend documents docs/backends/<backend>.md and use cases docs/usecases/<kebab-slug>.md.
• Use lowercase throughout. Keep the SCREAMING_CASE names of root-level documents, which is the GitHub convention.

5.4 Go files

• Use lowercase names with no underscores, except for the reserved suffixes below. Prefer a single word matching the primary type or the command.
• Place a command implementation in internal/action/<command>.go with an accompanying internal/action/<command>_test.go.
• Reserved suffixes: _test.go; the GOOS and GOARCH suffixes _unix.go, _windows.go, _linux.go, _darwin.go, _others.go; _gen.go for generated code; _fuzz.go for fuzz targets.
• Give a build-tag variant that is not GOOS-based a descriptive suffix and an explicit //go:build line, for example screenshot_supported.go and screenshot_stub.go.
• Split a file above roughly 600 lines along an existing type or feature seam.

6. Changelog

CHANGELOG.md follows Keep a Changelog 1.1.0: an ## [Unreleased] section at the top, then one ## [X.Y.Z] - YYYY-MM-DD section per release, each containing only the non-empty subsections of Added, Changed, Deprecated, Removed, Fixed, and Security.

helpers/release generates the entries from commit subjects at release time, using the mapping in §1.2 and the footers in §1.5. Do not edit CHANGELOG.md by hand, with two exceptions. Add a hand-written ## [Unreleased] entry for:

• any change to the exported surface of pkg/, as required by A-12; and
• any security: change.