Re: Bug? diff.submodule=log adds text to commit -v message

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 11, 2013, 23:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20131111232412.GA14924@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <52814C35.6040205@web.de>

On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 10:29:25PM +0100, Jens Lehmann wrote:

> The diff below fixes the problem you describe for me. (But I do not
> consider it a worthwhile fix in its current form because a line
> starting with "Submodule " might appear in a perfectly normal commit
> message, while "diff --git " most probably won't).

Yeah, this fix makes me nervous for that reason. "commit -v" has always been a little bit flaky in that respect, as it is simply guessing at the beginning of the diff text it added earlier. In addition to false negatives, it also has false positives, stripping out people's diffs that they meant to include in the commit message.

The "right" way to fix this is to change the format to use some more robust marker, like:

  # Everything below this line is a diff that will be removed.

I do not know offhand if anybody's commit-template generating or parsing scripts would be broken, but I doubt the fallout would be that big. When last we discussed this (AFAICT), we did not yet have 0b38227 (commit: Fix stripping of patch in verbose mode., 2008-11-12), which meant that it would affect _everybody_. Nowadays it would only affect users of "-v", which is presumably a much smaller population.

-Peff