Re: Make commit messages optional
- From
Tao Klerks <tao@klerks.biz>
- Date
- Apr 10, 2022, 13:59 UTC
- Message-ID
- <CAPMMpoi50j7MzrsokQAcBWBgj8qGPN=j68PuEsppv629Oh7GHg@mail.gmail.com>
- In-Reply-To
- <20220409113244.GX163591@kunlun.suse.cz>
On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 1:32 PM Michal Suchánek <msuchanek@suse.de> wrote:
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> > On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 07:32:03PM -0400, rsbecker@nexbridge.com wrote: > > On April 8, 2022 6:30 PM, brian m. carlson wrote: > > >On 2022-04-08 at 03:35:04, jurgen_gjoncari@icloud.com wrote: > > >> I think that often commit messages are unnecessary. I propose that by > > >> default a user should be able to commit without a message.
[...]
> > >We want to encourage good software engineering practices. > > >
[...]
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> > > > > >Users who want this behaviour can use --allow-empty-message or create an alias > > >with that option. The functionality already exists. I use aliases extensively in my > > >development and I know others do as well, so this shouldn't be an impediment if > > >you're working on projects where this is acceptable. > > >
[...]
> > There is nothing stopping you using '.' as the commit message which is > as informative as when it is empty. Hence this enforcement of non-empty > commit message does not serve the stated purpose.
My apologies if this proposal has already been made in this or prior discussions - the list server and gmail are having another disagreement, so I think I'm a few hours out of date.
I believe the main argument *for* allowing empty commit messages by default is "we shouldn't make it hard to do what you want to do, if you can fix it later", and the main argument *against* is "for most people (non-advanced users), what you do initially is what you end up pushing, or at least trying to push, and fixing things later is *hard* - it requires a much deeper understanding of git than most people otherwise necessarily need to develop".
In that sense, allowing people to create empty commit messages when they shouldn't, is often "trapping" them into a commit history that is less valuable (or even acceptable) than they might otherwise have achieved.
While I therefore disagree with Aevar's proposal to "allow empty, and advise", I do think the notion of giving advice makes perfect sense - let's do it the other way around, with an advice message something like:
--- Empty commit messages aren't normally allowed, as they reduce the understandability of the commit history. If you do need to create a commit with an empty message, you can do so by providing the '--allow-empty-message' argument to 'git commit'. ---
Has this already been considered/discussed? Would it meet the objectives of those folks saying "the rejection of empty messages wasted my time", while also keeping the spirit of "we should make it easy to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing, especially for beginners"?
Thanks, Tao