Initial Commit: A Dedication
The article suggests adding a personal dedication in the description of a software project's initial Git commit as a meaningful, permanent, and discreet gesture. Though invisible to most, it serves as a quiet tribute that endures as long as the project exists. The author shares how he dedicated his Django starter repo to his wife, drawing a parallel to dedications in books. This small act adds emotional significance without affecting the code or project documentation.
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Initial CommitA DedicationApril 28, 2026When you make the initial commit on a new repo, write a dedication in the description the commit. commit e0fc93ae66b5a0637cb8a8be8513f1f05dd5df97 Author: Harry Khanna <[email protected]> Date: Tue Sep 14 01:04:59 2021 -0400 Initial commit For Lisa, my whole heart. The subject line stays Initial commit. Underneath, where the description goes, that paragraph of space almost no one fills in, write a line for someone who matters to you. When I made my django-base starter repo, I dedicated it to my wife: For Lisa, my whole heart. The repo is a Django boilerplate. The dedication has nothing to do with Django. Lisa will probably never run git log on it. But it's there, and it changes how the project feels to me when I come back to it. It's permanent.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Khanna Law.
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