commitilla

Commitilla is a term used in software development to describe a small, focused code change committed in a single logical unit. The concept stresses atomicity: each commit should implement one distinct improvement or fix and be independently reviewable, testable, and reversible. The word appears to be a neologism formed from commit and the diminutive -illa, and it is encountered mainly in informal discussions among developers rather than as an official standard.

In practice, a commitilla is expected to include a concise commit message, a minimal set of changes, and accompanying tests where appropriate. It may be created as part of feature work, bug fixes, or documentation updates, but should not bundle unrelated changes. The aim is to facilitate easier code review and precise bisecting of regressions.

Advantages include clearer history, simpler reverts, and easier automated auditing. Commitilla also complements broader practices such as maintaining a clean history with atomic commits, small pull requests, and consistent testing pipelines.

Critics argue that overusing commitilla can lead to an excessive number of tiny commits, cluttering the repository history. Some teams prefer consolidating related commits before merging to maintain a cohesive narrative; others align on preserving the granularity of changes while ensuring each commit remains meaningful.

Example commit messages might include: "Fix off-by-one error in user input validation", or "Add unit tests for edge cases in parser". In practice, the term remains informal, and its adoption varies by team or project.