Aral Balkan

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Comet

Illustation of the Little Prince flying through space with a comet he has captured.

Comet. Wallpaper illustation by Margo de Weerdt

After several months of work, Comet version 1.0 is now available to install on elementary OS 6.

Comet is one of the artefacts from my three-month-long elementary OS 6 upgrade adventure and I will be writing more about the process of creating an app according to the elementary OS guidelines – what worked, what didn’t, and what can be improved – later.

I am also incorporating the lessons learned, workflows, etc., into Watson, my elementary OS 6 best-practices application template.

Comet logo: a flat illustation of an orange comet with a round yellow centre

Features

Distraction-free interface

Separates your commit message from the comment generated by Git and helps you focus on writing better commit messages.

Screenshot of the editor with one half displaying in light style and the other in dark style. The first line of the message reads: “This is the summary line of your Git commit message; make sure it isn’t too long” with the words “too long” highlighted in yellow. The second line of the message reads “You can change the suggested length in the Settings Menu. The Git comment for an initial commit with a new file called a.txt to be committed is displayed in a separate area. There is a Cancel and Commit button on the window.”

Spell check

Highlights spelling mistakes and offers suggestions. Automatically uses your current system language (you may need to install the dictionary for your language if it doesn’t come with the system.)

Screenshot of the editor with one half displaying in light style and the other in dark style. The first line of the message reads: “This is the summary line of your Git commit message; make sure it isn’t too long” with the words “too long” highlighted in yellow. The second line of the message reads “You can change the suggested length in the Settings Menu. The Git comment for an initial commit with a new file called a.txt to be committed is displayed in a separate area. There is a Cancel and Commit button on the window.”

Emoji support

Express yourself with emoji. Heck, it can even count emoji properly (what, you think such things are easy?) 🤪️

Screenshot of editor with the message “Press Control + . (period) to insert emoji” and the emoji picker popover showing. The Git comment for an initial commit with a new file called a.txt to be committed is partially visible in a separate area. There is a Cancel button (partially visible) and a Commit button on the window.

Configurable

Configure your first line character limit with common defaults or a custom value according to the conventions used by you or your team.

Screenshot of the editor with the Settings Menu open. A numeric stepper control inside it with the label “First line character limit” is set to 50. Underneath it, there are three buttons, labelled “Dogmatic (50)”, “GitHub truncation (72)”, and “GitLab truncation (100)”. In the editor, the message, partly obscured by the Settings Menu, reads “Dogma (n): A settled opinion”. The Git comment for an initial commit with a new file called a.txt to be committed is displayed in a separate area. There is a Cancel and Commit button on the window.

Low effort

Can update your Git configuration for you. Remembers your previous Git commit message editor so it can restore it if you disable Comet.

Screenshot of Welcome Screen. Screen contents: Text: “Comet: Write better Git commit messages.” Button (selected) with greyed-out comet icon and label that reads “Disable Comet: Revert to using your previous editor for Git commit messages.” Button with question mark in speech bubble icon and label that reads “Help. Having trouble? Get help and report issues.” Status message at bottom has green check mark and the text “Comet is enabled as your editor for Git commit messages.

I hope you enjoy it!

Install Comet from comet.small-web.org.

Comet is currently not available on the elementary OS AppCenter due to confusion around AppCenter policies regarding what constitutes a sandboxed app and what doesn’t as well as whether or not apps that are not sandboxed should be allowed. Follow this pull request and this issue for the latest news.

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