Subject: Re: [PATCH] docs: clarify meaning of core.commentString=auto

From: Oswald Buddenhagen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 19:20:48 +0100

On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 10:15:15AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>Oswald Buddenhagen <[email-masked]> writes:
>> no, i meant what i wrote: it makes it _literally_ impossible. it
>> follows
>> from the preceding sentence that _whatever_ is in the template will NOT
>> be the comment char.
>
>OK, it (i.e. the order in which things happen) would be a good thing
>to add to the explanation, to unconfuse readers who (incorrectly)
>guess that auto comment character is determined and then template is
>read, which is where my comment came from.
>
i hoped the formulation "the prepared commit message prior to editing"
would be unambiguous. did i miss anything? if you just made a thinko and
actually agree, then i'd leave the patch as-is, as it doesn't seem worth
expanding _that_ docu any further.

>> reading through the thread of the original submission, the feature is a
>> workaround for `commit -m` and `commit --amend` being inconsistent wrt.
>> message washing.
>
>Perhaps somebody can be talked into fixing it ;-)
>
>With a clear explanation, I am OK if somebody wants to advocate to
>deprecate (and remove at Git 3.0 boundary) the "auto" support ;-)
>
how would we go about this in practice? just a notice in the docu, or
some mechanism which would complain at runtime? under what circumstances
(i.e., how to enable/squelch it)?