Subject: Re: [BUG] git commit --allow-empty-message -m '' fails

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 May 2015 21:06:06 -0400

On Fri, May 01, 2015 at 07:31:08PM -0400, Josh Hagins wrote:

> When passed the `--allow-empty-message` flag with no `-m`, `git
> commit` will open the editor and allow you to exit with an empty
> message, as expected.
> 
> However, when passed `-m ''` in addition to `--allow-empty-message`,
> the commit fails. Example below:
> 
>     $ git commit -a --allow-empty-message -m ''
>     error: switch `m' requires a value
>     usage: git commit [<options>] [--] <pathspec>...
>     ...
> 
> Shouldn't the `-m` switch know whether the `--allow-empty-message`
> flag has been passed?

It should. It works here for me:

  $ git commit --allow-empty --allow-empty-message -m ''
  [master 2957ea1]

The message you're seeing comes from the option-parser, which thinks
there isn't any argument to `-m` at all. I can get the same result like:

  $ git commit --allow-empty --allow-empty-message -m
  error: switch `m' requires a value
  ...

Are you running the command inside another bit of shell script that
might be eating the empty argument (e.g., eval-ing it inside of another
set of single quotes or something like that)?

-Peff