Re: [PATCH 3/3] templates: detect messages that contain a separator line

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 9, 2026, 07:00 UTC
Message-ID: <20260209070018.GB585828@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqldh4b5y2.fsf@gitster.g>

On Sat, Feb 07, 2026 at 01:27:01PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> I have no qualms about the topic up to the previous step, but I know
> one of the things that I sometimes do will be broken with the change
> in this step, namely, when I know what I want to write below the
> three-dash lines, I would commit with "---" and additional notes
> below it, so that I do not forget during "format-patch".
>
> When the commit is turned into a patch email, possibly with some
> other material like "--notes=<ref>" that adds notes there, the
> resulting message will have two three-dashes lines, but because "am"
> cuts at the first one, and "apply" knows that the garbage lines at
> front, including three-dash lines, do not matter until it sees "^diff",
> this works out perfectly well.
> 
> Admittedly, I myself do not send out so many patches as I used to,
> but I suspect that there are others who have discovered this trick
> independently, and they would be unhappy to be interrupted by
> commit-msg hook like this.

I do it, too, though not all that often. Once upon a time I had a patch to teach git-commit to auto-convert lines after "---" into a note (which would then be formatted back out via format-patch). But I found for my git.git workflow that just letting the "---" ride along in the commit object was simpler and easier (since I don't care about having pristine commit objects, as their ultimate fate is to be dropped in favor of what is applied upstream).

-Peff