# How to enhance merge commit message ?

3 messages from 2007-01-30 to 2007-01-30. Participants: Alexander Litvinov, Junio C Hamano.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/6576

## Alexander Litvinov, 2007-01-30 04:32

Subject: How to enhance merge commit message ?
Message-ID: <200701301032.24917.litvinov2004@gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/200701301032.24917.litvinov2004%40gmail.com

```
Hello list,

git's git repo contains a lot of merges with nice commit message, 
like this (d96497b8d):

Merge branches 'jc/merge-base', 'sp/merge', 'jc/diff', 'jc/explain', 'jc/web' 
and 'jc/pickaxe' into pu
    
    * jc/merge-base:
      Teach "git-merge-base --check-ancestry" about refs.
      git-merge-base: --check-ancestry option
    
    * sp/merge:
      Avoid git-fetch in `git-pull .` when possible.
    
    * jc/diff:
      test-para: combined diff between HEAD, index and working tree.
      para-walk: walk n trees, index and working tree in parallel
    
    * jc/explain:
      git-explain
....

How can I made the same messages using git pull . <branch> ?

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2007-01-30 04:45

Subject: Re: How to enhance merge commit message ?
Message-ID: <7v8xfl6s27.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7v8xfl6s27.fsf%40assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net
In-Reply-To: <200701301032.24917.litvinov2004@gmail.com>

```
Alexander Litvinov <litvinov2004@gmail.com> writes:

> git's git repo contains a lot of merges with nice commit message, 
> like this (d96497b8d):
> ....
> How can I made the same messages using git pull . <branch> ?

$ grep -A2 '^merge\.summary' Documentation/config.txt
merge.summary::
	Whether to include summaries of merged commits in newly created
	merge commit messages. False by default.

This is a good option if you are doing the top-level "bundling
of others' work -- people will base their further work on this"
merges.  On the other hand, if you are merging from your uplevel
because your work depends on something that was updated recently,
having the merge summary is often pointless (because the merge
would bring in many mostly unrelated commits, in addition to that
something your work depends on).  I think Linus has explicitly
asked this option not enabled by people he pulls from for this
reason.

We might want to have a per-branch option to control this
behaviour at finer grained level.  I would enable it for my four
primary integration branches (maint, master, next, and pu) but
not for topic branches.  That way, if a topic needs a fix that
happened on the master since it forked, the tip of the master
will be merged back to the topic without the merge summary
message (I would describe why that merge in an unusual direction
was needed in the commit message anyway).

```

## Alexander Litvinov, 2007-01-30 05:23

Subject: Re: How to enhance merge commit message ?
Message-ID: <200701301123.59687.litvinov2004@gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/200701301123.59687.litvinov2004%40gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <7v8xfl6s27.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

```
В сообщении от Tuesday 30 January 2007 10:45 Junio C Hamano написал(a):
> $ grep -A2 '^merge\.summary' Documentation/config.txt
> merge.summary::
> 	Whether to include summaries of merged commits in newly created
> 	merge commit messages. False by default.
Thanks !

> This is a good option if you are doing the top-level "bundling
> of others' work -- people will base their further work on this"
> merges.  On the other hand, if you are merging from your uplevel
> because your work depends on something that was updated recently,
> having the merge summary is often pointless (because the merge
> would bring in many mostly unrelated commits, in addition to that
> something your work depends on).  I think Linus has explicitly
> asked this option not enabled by people he pulls from for this
> reason.
I understand your point.

```