Re: [PATCH 0/1] sequencer: comment out the 'squash!' line

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 6, 2020, 19:32 UTC
Message-ID: <20200106193253.GA971477@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CANoM8SV=pT3sFrfnEqWc2xBn_c2rES0qSMsdptF0DgcxgYL94w@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Jan 06, 2020 at 02:20:09PM -0500, Mike Rappazzo wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> > Can you tell us more about your expected use case?  I am imagining
> > that most people use the log messages from both/all commits being
> > squashed when manually editing to perfect the final log message (as
> > opposed to mechanically processing the concatenated message), so it
> > shouldn't matter if the squash! title is untouched or commented out
> > to them, and those (probably minority) who are mechanical processing
> > will be hurt with this change, so I do not quite see the point of
> > this patch.
> 
> This change isn't removing the subject line from the commit message
> during the edit phase, it is only commenting it out.  With the subject being
> commented out, it can minimize the effort to edit during the squash.
> 
> Furthermore, it can help to eliminate accidental inclusion in the final
> message.  Ultimately, the accidental inclusion is my motivation for
> submitting this.

But I thought that was the point of "squash" versus "fixup"? One includes the commit message, and the other does not.

I do think "commit --squash" is mostly useless for that reason, and I suspect we could do a better job in the documentation about pushing people to "--fixup".

But --squash _can_ be useful with other options to populate the commit message (e.g., "--edit", which just pre-populates the subject with the right "squash!" line but lets you otherwise write a normal commit message). If that's the workflow you're using, then I'm sympathetic to auto-removing just a "squash!" line, as it's automated garbage that is only meant as a signal for --autosquash.

-Peff