Re: Does Git really need a commit message to go with a commit?

On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
[off-list ref] wrote:

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 22:26, Santi Béjar [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 12:06 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

git-commit(1) doesn't allow you to make a commit without a commit
message. This is annoying and doesn't properly preserve history in
applications like snerp-vortex which replay a SVN dump into Git. You
have to add `$msg = "Git made me do it" unless length $msg' somewhere.

Is there really no way to add a commit with no message with the git
tools? Will anything break if I manually construct a commit with no
message? Are commit messages inherently part of the format or does
git-commit(1) just think it knows better than me?

Normally it does not make sense an empty commit message, so it is
forbidden by default. But there is a flag (documented in the man page)
since v1.5.4 (v1.5.3.7-994-g36863af git-commit --allow-empty,
2007-12-03) to allow it.

Actually --allow-empty allows you to commit an empty /tree/. It
doesn't do anything for the commit message itself.

Arg! You are right, sorry for the noise. I should not write emails
during the night...

I then suppose your only option is to use plumbing commands (see
git(1)), in this case git-commit-tree. In general if you write scripts
around git you should use only plumbing commands as they don't change
the behavior.

HTH,
Santi