It's common to put "Refs #123" or "Closes #123" in version control commit messages, and then have a server-side hook that lists the referring commits under that ticket in the ticket tracker, closing the ticket if requested.

It can be a bit of a pain to remember to reference the ticket you're working on, though.

Inspired by a discussion with Teddy at work, I just wrote a Git hook to auto-reference tickets from the branchname.

Get it here: http://gist.github.com/184711

Installation instructions are in the file.

Use the format t123 (or t123-whatever) for your topic branch names. When you are on such a branch and make a commit, the hook will append "Refs #123." to the commit message. It's clever enough to not add it if your message already contains "#123", e.g. if you've put "Closes #123" in there or a manual "Refs #123".

Because I can't stand an unclosed sentence, the hook takes care of that as it appends, turning "fix it" into "fix it. Refs #123."

If the branch name does not follow that format (e.g. in master), your commit message is untouched.

I chose to use the commit-msg hook, which runs after you've written a commit message but before the commit is made. Some would perhaps prefer to use the prepare-commit-msg hook, so the reference is pre-populated and can be edited as you write the rest of the commit message. That doesn't work with the custom commit dialog in the TextMate Git bundle, though, which is what I use.

Feel free to fork and adapt to your workflow.