Re: [PATCH 1/2] commit: do not cleanup template

On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 22:13, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

[…]
My gut feeling is that it is relatively easy to justify [1/2]. We prepare
the message file to be edited by the committer in sb by reading from
different message sources, and usually we would want to clean up what is
in sb before writing it out, but you may want to enforce a particular
format by using the template (such as having a leading whitespace) and the
way to tweak and fix that appearance should be by editing the template,
not by automatically running stripspace() here [*1*] when the message came
from the template.

That's exactly my point of view.

I use the commit template feature mostly to show additional pieces of
information I'd use in my editor when writing the log.
It had scratched an itch because I have to insert manually a newline
to write the commit title whenever I use a commit log template.
It's a bit strange for me to have that different behavior when writing
a commit log whether the commit log template feature is used or not.
I consider the newline being part of the template since sometimes the
template could even pre-fill the commit log title.
That's the main reason I disabled the cleanup when using a template.

I cannot tell offhand how you justify [2/2], though. What motivated you to
remove this blank line? At this point in the codepath, it does not look
like it should matter if the original message came from your template or
from somewhere else.

In the way I use the commit log template, I consider that new line
inserted there as useless.

If the blank line is unneeded after "# You may be committing a merge..."
for readability, wouldn't that blank line be unneeded when you took the
message from other places, no?

Maybe.

It might make sense to move that newline before "if (whence != FROM_COMMIT)"
block, though, to make the logic easier to follow, regardless of the use
of the template file.

Moving the newline there will not change my point of view on the
usefulness of it when using a template.

-- 
Boris Faure