Re: [RFC PATCH] commit -v: strip diffs and submodule shortlogs from the commit message

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

I found this hard to parse, I think because of the "keeping" (why would
I not keep it?), and because you are talking about lines above and
below. It is not as accurate to say:

  # ------------------ >8 --------------------
  # Everything below this line will be removed.

because it is technically the line above that is the cutoff. But I think
the meaning is clear, and it is simpler to parse.

I do think it would be simpler with a single line. I know handling the
i18n was a question there, but I think we should be fine as long as we
check for the exact bytes we wrote. Surely gettext can do something
like:

  magic = _("# Everything below this line will be removed");
  fprintf(fh, "%s", magic);
  ...
  p = strstr(magic);

I don't know what guarantees on string lifetime gettext gives us, but
the worst case is that we simply strdup the result.

I suppose it's possible that the translated string could have utf8 with
multiple representations, and the user's editor normalizes the text in a
different way than we wrote it when it saves the result. I don't know if
that is worth caring about or not; it seems kind of insane.

I agree with your rewording suggestion.  It might make it even more
robust to do something like

    const char cut_here[] = "# --- cut here --- >8 --- cut here ---";

    fprintf(fh, "%s\n", cut_here);
    fputs(_("# Everything below this line will be removed\n"), fh);
    ...
    p = strstr(cut_here);

i.e. a real marker line that will never be translated, with an
explanation immediately below that can be translated.