Semantic commit type when remove something

Question

What semantic commit type is better to use, when I remove a feature: feat, refactor or something else?

Answer 1

you should use refactor,

• feat: introduces a new feature to the codebase
• fix: patches a bug in your codebase
• refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature

you can refer to angular/CONTRIBUTING Commit Message Guidelines

Answer 2

By definition, it is refactor, since:

refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature

Removing a feature is certainly a code change, and it neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature.

However, people usually have an assumption that refactor tends to not introduce breaking changes. And removing a feature tends to always break the API, since a feature is removed from the API, and this breaks all existing system depending on that feature.

What about other types? Absence of a feature itself may be considered as a feature. For example, if someone dislike the idea of password login (it is annoying to input a password every time to login), then they may consider not having the feature of password login is a feature. Thus removing a feature can be considered as adding an new feature. At the same time, if absence of a feature itself may be considered as a feature, than the existence of that feature may be considered as a bug. So removing a feature may be considered as fixing a bug. Thus removing a feature is both feat and fix.

Alternatively, we can pretend that the problem does not exist. A well designed library should not have an unwanted feature. And since other libraries and applications may depend on this feature, so features should never be removed. But this ideal principle does not apply to every library.

So my suggestion is giving this type of commit a new name.