Re: [PATCH] have merge put FETCH_HEAD data in commit message

Quoting Junio C Hamano [off-list ref]:
Subject: Re: [PATCH] have merge put FETCH_HEAD data in commit message

"Michael S. Tsirkin" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

quoted

quoted

3. if I want to have some text coming *before* the commit
   message ignored, there's no way to do this
4. there's no way to override the subject from within the message
   (like there is with author/From line)

How about this?

Looks good. What about 3?

When e-mailed message has garbage at the beginning (e.g. "Hi!"),
git users can either run "commit --amend" immiediately after
"git am",

This one would overwrite the authorship information though,
would it not? I actually wished several times for an --amend-message
commit flag that would only edit the message, preserving the author
(and possibly date?) metadata.
Of course, I simply copy the author and pass it in --author,
but it's somewhat awkward to do. Do others notice this?

*Maybe* git can be even smarter, and notice that only
commit message has changed, and preserve the author automatically
in this case? I haven't looked at how hard that would be to do.

<rant>
I actually find it awkward that author/summary information is never
shown during git commit - sometimes one does git commit
on a machine where GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL has not been setup
correctly, and the result often is mst@mst-desktop.(none).
Or people sometimes forget that the first line will show up
in the pretty=short summary and the result is that what
ends up being there is just 2 first lines of the long description.

One has to remember to always do git log --pretty=short
after commit to verify that one did get these details right.

Ideas:
- Maybe have git-commit display shortlog summary for commit just created?
- Maybe put Author: (or From:? and maybe Subject:?) line in the pre-formatted
  commit message, and let the user edit them?
</rant>

or edit the mbox with editor before running
"applymbox", so the need has not been felt much us, and that is
the primary reason why it is not there.  Additionally we do not
think it is particularly a good practice to have "cover letters"
at the top (cf. $gmane/5418), so it was never high priority for
us to add that feature to encourage such a practice.

Having said that, on top of the recent work by Don Zickus on
mailinfo, you _could_ add support for scissors "^-- >8 --$" if
you want.

OK, I thought about this a bit - if the message includes a
cover letter, I think it's also likely to have an incorrect
subject too. So how about simply ignoring text before
Subject:/From: lines? This makes more sense, for me, than
inventing yet another git-specific convention. Does this for you?


-- 
MST