committen

Committen is a verb used in several Germanic languages to describe the act of creating a commit in a version control system. Derived from the English noun “commit,” the term appears in Dutch, German, and other technical jargon, with spelling variants such as committen, commiteren, or gecommit depending on language and grammar.

In practice, to commit means to record a snapshot of the current state of a codebase in a repository, together with metadata including the author, timestamp, and a descriptive message. A commit represents a reversible unit of work and becomes part of the project’s history. In most workflows the changes are prepared in a staging area and then committed; in Git, for example, the developer creates a commit with a message and may push it to a remote repository.

Best practices for committen include writing clear, concise messages in the present tense that explain what the change does and why, keeping commits small and focused, and avoiding the inclusion of generated or unrelated changes. Linking messages to issue trackers by reference numbers is common in teams that use issue management.

Variants and related terms: commiteren or committeten in some dialects; “commit” as a noun or verb in English; related actions include pushing, merging, and branching.

Limitations: The spelling and conventions for committen vary by language and organization, so local style guides typically provide the definitive rules.