Re: git-svn rebase screwing up commit messages

From: Sean <seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
Date: Jul 28, 2007, 14:11 UTC
Message-ID: <20070728101156.20304d11.seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
In-Reply-To: <7vk5skps1g.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2007 06:38:19 -0700 Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Actually the patched behaviour actively encourages a bad (not in
> the sense that those oneline tools will not work well, but in
> the sense that these messages are reader unfriendly) practice; I
> do not think what the patch did deserves to be called "fixed".
> And that is one of the reasons, other than that we are in -rc
> freeze that we do not add anything but unarguable fixes, that I
> am not considering the patch for inclusion right now.
>

First, i didn't read the patch and i have no stake at all in non-conforming commit messages; i always follow the convention. Having said that, the current behavior of Git crosses the line from advocating the common commit message format into the realm of not-working properly with non-conforming commit messages.

I would argue that you shouldn't try to have it both ways. Either Git supports non-conforming message formats, in which case the current behavior seems buggy. Or Git does not support commit messages that deviate from the standard, in which case the documentation should be updated to state so bluntly.

If handling email-mangled commit messages means that non-conforming formats can no longer be fully supported (while discouraged) then perhaps the time has come to explicitly state that people should not expect Git to handle anything but the 1+empty+description commit message format.

Sean