Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/9] doc: interpret-trailers: explain key format

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 May 2026 11:41:40 +0900

"Kristoffer Haugsbakk" <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 13, 2026, at 12:20, [email-masked] wrote:
>> From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <[email-masked]>
>>[snip]
>
> Sorry to Ben here who I forgot to set on copy. :/
>
> +Cc now.

It has been quite a while and I have no recollection if there were
still necessary adjustments or not.  Is everybody happy with the
final text?

https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/

 Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc | 68 +++++++++++++++++++++++--------
 1 file changed, 50 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
index 77b4f63b05..b42f957d66 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ git-interpret-trailers(1)
 
 NAME
 ----
-git-interpret-trailers - Add or parse structured information in commit messages
+git-interpret-trailers - Add or parse metadata in commit messages
 
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
@@ -14,9 +14,15 @@ git interpret-trailers [--in-place] [--trim-empty]
 
 DESCRIPTION
 -----------
-Add or parse _trailer_ lines that look similar to RFC 822 e-mail
-headers, at the end of the otherwise free-form part of a commit
-message. For example, in the following commit message
+Add or parse trailers metadata at the end of the otherwise
+free-form part of a commit message, or any other kind of text.
+
+A _trailer_ in its simplest form is a key-value pair with a colon as a
+separator. The _key_ consists of ASCII alphanumeric characters and
+hyphens (`-`). A _trailer block_ consists of one or more trailers. The
+trailer block needs to be preceded by a blank line, where a _blank line_
+is either an empty or a whitespace-only line. For example, in the
+following commit message
 
 ------------------------------------------------
 subject
@@ -81,19 +87,25 @@ trailer.sign.key "Signed-off-by: "
 in your configuration, you only need to specify `--trailer="sign: foo"`
 on the command line instead of `--trailer="Signed-off-by: foo"`.
 
-By default the new trailer will appear at the end of all the existing
-trailers. If there is no existing trailer, the new trailer will appear
-at the end of the input. A blank line will be added before the new
-trailer if there isn't one already.
+By default the new trailer will appear at the end of the trailer block.
+A trailer block will be created with only that trailer if a trailer
+block does not already exist. Recall that a trailer block needs to be
+preceded by a blank line, so a blank line (specifically an empty line)
+will be inserted before the new trailer block in that case.
 
-Existing trailers are extracted from the input by looking for
-a group of one or more lines that (i) is all trailers, or (ii) contains at
-least one Git-generated or user-configured trailer and consists of at
+Existing trailers are extracted from the input by looking for the
+trailer block. Concretely, that is a group of one or more lines that (i)
+is all trailers, or (ii) contains at least one Git-generated or
+user-configured trailer and consists of at
 least 25% trailers.
-The group must be preceded by one or more empty (or whitespace-only) lines.
-The group must either be at the end of the input or be the last
-non-whitespace lines before a line that starts with `---` (followed by a
-space or the end of the line).
+The trailer block is by definition at the end the the message. The end
+of the message in turn is either (i) at the end of the input, or (ii)
+the last non-whitespace lines before a line that starts with `---`
+(followed by a space or the end of the line).
+
+This command ignores comment lines (see `core.commentString` in
+linkgit:git-config[1]). This is for use with the `prepare-commit-msg`
+and `commit-msg` hooks.
 
 When reading trailers, there can be no whitespace before or inside the
 _<key>_, but any number of regular space and tab characters are allowed
@@ -107,9 +119,6 @@ key: This is a very long value, with spaces and
   newlines in it.
 ------------------------------------------------
 
-Note that trailers do not follow (nor are they intended to follow) many of the
-rules for RFC 822 headers. For example they do not follow the encoding rule.
-
 OPTIONS
 -------
 `--in-place`::
@@ -402,6 +411,29 @@ mv "\$1.new" "\$1"
 $ chmod +x .git/hooks/commit-msg
 ------------
 
+* Here we try to to use three different trailer keys. But it fails
+  because two of them are not recognized as trailer keys.
++
+----
+$ cat msg.txt
+subject
+
+Skapad-på: some-branch
+Hash-in-v6.11: 45c12d3269fe48f22834320c782ffe86c3560f2c
+Reviewed-by: Alice <[email-masked]>
+$ git interpret-trailers --only-trailers <msg.txt
+$
+----
++
+Recall that a trailer key has to consist of only ASCII alphanumeric
+characters and hyphens, and this does not hold for the two first
+supposed trailer keys. And now none are recognized as trailers because
+the candidate trailer block has at least one non-trailer line, even
+though `Reviewed-by` is a valid trailer key. Recall that a trailer block
+has to either (i) be all trailers, or (ii) consist of at least one
+Git-generated or user-configured trailer (and some other conditions).
+And (ii) is not satisfied since we have not configured any trailer keys.
+
 SEE ALSO
 --------
 linkgit:git-commit[1], linkgit:git-format-patch[1], linkgit:git-config[1]