Re: why does "git revert" commit even if i try to bail with ":q!"?

From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 12, 2019, 18:24 UTC
Message-ID: <CABPp-BHV9+7+3si8NOA0ouYZ_Zyo5yMqMbSggwoYmRLK-kB_dA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1903121419070.18042@localhost.localdomain>

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 11:21 AM Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

>
> On Tue, 12 Mar 2019, Kevin Daudt wrote:
>
> ... snip ...
>
> > The only reason why `:q!` works just for comitting is because there
> > is no default message, so the final message ends up empty.
> >
> > When you do things like git revert or git commit --amend, there is
> > already a commit message, which you are then editing. When you quit
> > without saving, the existing message remains and git uses that.
> >
> > vim has a command to let it exit with an error return code: `:cq`.
> > This makes git something went wrong with editing the message,
> > causing git to abort the commit.
>
>   ah, i'm starting to get it. predictably, i think this needs to be
> mentioned in a man page. :-) thanks muchly for clearing that up.

If you do fix up some manpage, note that this affects e.g. commit --amend too as pointed out by Kevin (and maybe also the 'reword' option of git-rebase?) -- anything that starts with .git/COMMIT_MSG being non-empty.