Re: [PATCH v2] git-commit.txt: clarify -t requires editing message

Adam Monsen <haircut@gmail.com> writes:

The root cause of the confusion is that the entire "--template" code piggy backs on the non-templated case, where we would want to error out if the user leaves the editor without explaining the commit. And an appropriate diagnosis message for the "normal" case is "you gave me an empty message", but "--template" code did not bother updating that to suit what it tries to do better, e.g. "you did not edit the template I gave you".

The check to see if the message the user left matches that came from the template was tacked into a wrong function message_is_empty(); it should be made into its own helper function and called from the same caller where it calls message_is_empty() only when template_file is not NULL. Also its honoring "--allow-empty" needs to be reconsidered.

In other words, I think that is something that needs fixing the broken code to behave less confusingly, not documenting its wrong behaviour.