merge summaries

It took me some time to figure out how to get summaries of the merged  
branch into merge messages. Finally I recognized that I simply need  
to set

	git-config merge.summary true


I have two questions:
1) Why isn't 'true' the default setting? The two probably most  
prominent git repositories, git and kernel, both use merge summaries.  
After some time working with git I started to wonder, how these guys  
create the nicely formatted branch summaries. If merge summaries are  
apparently best practice, why are they missing in my local merges?

2) Why does git-merge have a switch '--no-summary' to switch  
summaries off, but doesn't have a switch '--summary' to switch them  
on? After some time of searching for the solution I started to  
believe that Linus and Junio might use some shell magic to create  
their merge messages, which they pipe to git-merge's -m switch. This  
inconsistency made finding the simple solution even harder.

- Steffen

On Fri, 18 May 2007, Steffen Prohaska wrote:

It took me some time to figure out how to get summaries of the merged branch
into merge messages. Finally I recognized that I simply need to set

	git-config merge.summary true

Yes.

I have two questions:
1) Why isn't 'true' the default setting? The two probably most prominent git
repositories, git and kernel, both use merge summaries.

Think about _who_ uses it for those two prominent repositories for a while.

[ pause, ponder here ]

In other words, "merge.summary" should be true ONLY FOR TOP-LEVEL 
MAINTAINERS.

Making it true for anybody else is almost always a bug. Yes, I and Junio 
have it enabled, but pretty much nobody else should, because if they pull 
from me or Junio in order to merge, their merge summaries would be exactly 
the wrong way around!

2) Why does git-merge have a switch '--no-summary' to switch summaries off,
but doesn't have a switch '--summary' to switch them on?

Probably because "normal users" should never use summaries in the first 
place, so it's just not been an issue.

		Linus