Introducing Quoty: Never Write a Boring Commit Message Again

We've all been there. You've just finished a small batch of changes, and you're ready to commit your work. The brain is tired 😴, and the temptation is strong. You type it out, almost instinctively: git commit -am "Updates". It's a bad habit, and it makes for a git history that's as unhelpful as it is uninspired.

I found myself falling into this trap far too often. Tired of writing meaningless progress commits, I decided to build a small, fun tool to solve the problem: Quoty.

What is Quoty? 🚀

Quoty is a simple, blazing-fast Command-Line Interface (CLI) tool written in Rust that does one thing and does it well: it gives you a random, often insightful, programmer quote.

The idea was to make writing a decent commit message easier than writing a lazy one. Instead of having to think of something witty, I could just use a quote that captures the spirit of software development.

How It Works

The magic of quoty lies in its simplicity and its integration with the command line. To commit your changes with a random quote, you can just run:

git commit -am "$(quoty)"

The $(quoty) part executes the tool, and its output (a random quote) is used directly as the commit message. The result is a commit history that's a little more interesting and a lot less lazy. ✨

Features

Beyond just providing a random quote, quoty has a few other handy features:

• quoty --list-authors: Lists all the authors of the quotes.
• quoty --list-quotes: Prints out every available quote.
• quoty --help: Shows the standard help text.
• quoty --version: Displays the current version of the tool.

The Story Behind the Quotes 🤫

Some of the most interesting quotes in quoty are attributed to "Anon". These aren't just random internet sayings; they're a personal collection of memorable lines from friends and previous employers who shall remain anonymous. Yes, that includes gems like "Pay will be on monday - Anon". It adds a little bit of personal history and inside jokes to my commit logs.

Why Rust?

I chose to write quoty in Rust for a few key reasons. First, the performance is fantastic, which is great for a CLI tool that needs to be snappy. Second, Rust's ability to compile to a single, dependency-free binary is a huge plus. It makes distribution and installation incredibly simple – you don't have to worry about managing a runtime or a package manager.

How to Get It 📦

Since quoty is published on crates.io, the easiest way to install it is with Cargo:

cargo install quoty

Alternatively, if you want to build from source, quoty is open source and available on my GitHub repository. You can clone the repository and build it yourself:

git clone https://github.com/mxaddict/quoty.git
cd quoty
cargo build --release
# The binary will be in ./target/release/quoty

Final Thoughts

quoty started as a personal solution to a common problem, but it's become a fun little tool that I use daily. It's a great example of how a small, focused CLI application can improve development habits and add a bit of character to your workflow. Give it a try, and let's put an end to "Updates" commits for good! 🍻