From: Thomas Rast Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:43:00 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] merge: add instructions to the commit message when editing Message-ID: <878vkoamu3.fsf@thomas.inf.ethz.ch> In-Reply-To: <7vy5soaons.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> Junio C Hamano writes: > Thomas Rast writes: > >> The sentence about justification is one of the few things about >> standard git that are not agnostic to the workflow that the user >> chose. > > We try to be agnostic at plumbing level, but I do not think we ever made > such a promise at the Porcelain level like "git merge". On the contrary, > we try to encourage good workflows by coding behaviours to support BCP to > Porcelain commands. Am I misreading what you were trying to say here? Oh, I was just trying to preempt a possible argument why this is wrong. Maybe I was a bit over-eager in doing so ;-) >> +static const char merge_editor_comment[] = >> +N_("Please enter the commit message for your merge commit. You should\n" >> +"justify it especially if it merges an updated upstream into a topic\n" >> +"branch.\n" >> +"\n" >> +"Lines starting with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts\n" >> +"the commit.\n"); > > I am tempted to rewrite this a bit, perhaps something like ... > > Please enter the commit message for your merge commit. Explain > why the merge is necessary, especially if it merges an updated > upstream into a topic branch. > > ... because people who need to be told to "justify it" would probably be > helped by a more explicit "explain _why_ it is needed". Why not. The "explain..." might be construed as a bit too coercive, but I cannot come up with a way to defuse it (well, except again tacking on "you should") and yours is certainly much clearer. -- Thomas Rast trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch