Re: [PATCH] commit & merge: modularize the empty message validator

From: Kaartic Sivaraam <kaarticsivaraam91196@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 13, 2017, 13:00 UTC
Message-ID: <1499950837.2427.1.camel@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq8tju3eqp.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Tue, 2017-07-11 at 13:22 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Having said all that, I am not sure "Prevent such surprises" is a
> problem that is realistic to begin with.  When a user sees the
> editor buffer in "git merge", it is pre-populated with at least a
> single line of message "Merge branch 'foo'", possibly followed by
> the summary  the side branch being merged, so unless the user
> deliberately removes everything and then add a sign-off line
> (because we do not usually add one), there is no room for "such
> surprises" in the first place.  It does not _hurt_ to diagnose such
> a crazy case, but it feels a bit lower priority.
>

It's little unfortunate that I haven't mentioned the reason I asked the question that has resulted in this patch. It would explain a little about why I thought this wasn't "meh" (I hope it stands for "who care what ever").

Sometimes I abort an commit from from the editor by providing an empty commit message. Then I came to know that 'git commit' considers commit messages with just signed-off-by lines as an empty message. I tried to take advantage of that. I once tried to abort a merge by just removing the "Merge ..." line and leaving the "Signed-off" line and was surprised to see the merge happen instead of an abort. The rest is history. :)

-- 
Kaartic