From: Ben Knoble Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:44:43 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 1/2] builtin/history: abort reword on unchanged message Message-ID: <3D9034D8-C38F-48A1-B637-4342BE4954AC@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: > Le 8 juin 2026 à 08:23, Junio C Hamano a écrit : > [snip] > Having said that, I personally think that the current behaviour of > `commit --amend` and `history reword` are both _wrong_ [*2*]. > > You may start `git commit --amend`, and after staring at the > existing commit log message for some time in your editor, it is > quite natural for you to decide that leaving the commit as-is is the > right thing [*3*] in your situation. It may have been a better > design for the system to notice this situation and leave the commit > as-is, with an override option `--force` to allow users to forcibly > update the committer ident and timestamp in the commit header. I am > not a `history reword` user (yet), but from the motivation you > described for this patch, I sense that the story is the same there. FWIW, in this situation I abort my editor (:cquit in Vim) so that the amend gets an error-valued exit code from the subprocess and aborts itself. Perhaps there could/should be a better side-channel for communicating that, though? I do not know how easy it is to tell other editors to « quit with errors ». > [Footnote] > > *1* Besides, doesn't "--update-refs" in "rebase -i" allow you to > adjust the branches? > > *2* But it is an established behaviour people _rely_ on, so even > though it may have been better if these commands behaved > differently, it probably is a bit too late to change it now. > > *3* This includes the case where the original author is especially > difficult to work with and would complain any change to their > commits, even if the only change you made for them is a > typofix. Fixing a small typo/grammo may not be worth your time > and unpleasant exchanges with them after touching their commit.