Re: git-am applies commit message diffs

From: Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 11, 2026, 02:34 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+P7+xpYSyhBoC23RLycVXFSBB2=dgsQrnvLkk0D7afOqWyafA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CA+P7+xo0-9h_V8xGQaEdgBEaxjrbrNOdPfmFmhKup+Z-7w0zUw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 6:31 PM Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

>
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 7:47 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
> >
> > > That is worth a thought indeed. I guess one of the biggest questions
> > > here is whether we can introduce such an unambiguous mode in such a way
> > > that old Git clients/patch(1) would continue to understand them. I
> > > wouldn't mind much if they would still misinterpret the ambiguous parts.
> > > But if so, we could make this unambiguous mode the default without a
> > > breaking change.
> >
> > Yup, if the old versions misinterpret exactly the same way as
> > before, then it does not even have to be called "unambiguous mode"
> > that is on by default.  I doubt it is possible, though.
> >
>
> Hmm. If we add a new unambiguous marker after the ---, old versions
> would see '...' and know to cut the description. New versions would
> wait for <NEW MARKER> and properly ignore any diff/etc prior to this.
>
> Since <NEW MARKER> is after a ---, it would be ignored and not
> inserted as part of the commit message, and because all versions
> universally accept cruft between --- and the diff start, this should
> be acceptable right?

Keeping in mind we'd have to use <NEW MARKER> as something that we somehow reject as being a valid part of a commit message somehow, so that you can't accidentally insert it, and we'd need to be careful about rejecting formatting such a patch, and probably complaining on the receiving end if we see multiple markers.. Trickier than it sounds I imagine.