Subject: Re: [GSoC Proposal/RFC] Rolling commit message writing

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:05:08 -0500

Hi,

Avery Pennarun wrote:

> Given these existing capabilities, is it still worth adding the
> feature you propose?

I think it might be, in some modified form.

Suppose I am working on a medium-sized change that for reasons of
bisectability or ontology has to be one commit.  In the middle of
working, I notice I needed to do something nonobvious.  Currently when
this happens, I get out a pad of paper and write it down, so I can be
sure to mention it in the commit message.

Wouldn’t it be nicer in such situations to be able to say git add
--commit-message or similar, open an editor, and write the note right
away?

In other words, it would be nice to have a file in .git that is

 - cleared on successful commit
 - automatically used to fill COMMIT_EDITMSG, like MERGE_MSG is

I suspect something like this can be achieved by the combination of
the commit.template configuration variable and a post-commit hook to
clear the file, but I haven’t tried it.

Regards,
Jonathan