From: Junio C Hamano Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:12:59 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Teach git-commit about commit message templates. Message-ID: <7vfy3fkpr8.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> In-Reply-To: <46A48949.1020501@midwinter.com> Steven Grimm writes: > With the patch, my intent was: > > * Strip off all comment lines > * Strip off all Signed-off-by: lines > * Trim whitespace > * If the result has no content (! -s file), abort. > * If a template file was specified: > * Strip off all comment and Signed-off-by: lines from the template > * Trim whitespace from the template > * If the resulting trimmed template is the same as the trimmed > commit message, abort. > > So I guess before getting to the specifics of the code, I'll ask: does > the above make sense as a design? I wanted to preserve the existing > behavior in the absence of a template. Offhand, an "interesting" side effect of the above I can see is that you will cry "wolf" if the only thing the user did is to add his own Signed-off-by: line ;-) But that is sane in the context of coming up with totally new commit log message. I am more worried about how this should interact with cases where you usually do not start the log message from scratch. For example, are there cases / policies where being able to use templates to leave comments on merge commits are needed? Squash-commits? Perhaps "apply this template but only when you have hand resolved a conflicting merges"? Or even the case of amending a commit made by somebody else, without changing the tree contents, in order to make the commit log message to conform to the company standard?