What would be a good commit message for updating package versions using Conventional Commits?

Question

Following Conventional Commits what would be the best <type> for commits regarding package version changes (upgrades/updates)?

E.g.: feat: Bump React version to "16.13.1"

E.g.: feat: Upgrade all dependencies

Answer 1

Others: commit types other than fix: and feat: are allowed, for example @commitlint/config-conventional (based on the the Angular convention) recommends chore:, docs:, style:, refactor:, perf:, test:, and others. We also recommend improvement for commits that improve a current implementation without adding a new feature or fixing a bug. Notice these types are not mandated by the conventional commits specification, and have no implicit effect in semantic versioning (unless they include a BREAKING CHANGE, which is NOT recommended). A scope may be provided to a commit’s type, to provide additional contextual information and is contained within parenthesis, e.g., feat(parser): add ability to parse arrays.

Source: https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0-beta.2/

So an ideal candidate for me would be chore: upgrade package dependencies which must not result in any version number bump.

Be aware though that upgrading dependencies may or may not incur breaking changes which may result in a commit significantly bigger than just a package.json update.

But as far as your app goes, it would be your job to deal with those breaking changes without changing anything for the user. So in that respect I don't think that neither feat: nor fix: is justified as, ideally, this commit doesn't bring any user-facing changes.

Answer 2

If you use build scope consider this option:

build(deps): bump React version to "17.0.2"

Conventional commits are based on the Angular conventional commits. Angular's CONTRIBUTING.md states:

build: Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (example scopes: gulp, broccoli, npm)