Re: [PATCH] commit & merge: modularize the empty message validator

On Tue, 2017-07-11 at 13:22 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Having said all that, I am not sure "Prevent such surprises" is a
problem that is realistic to begin with.  When a user sees the
editor buffer in "git merge", it is pre-populated with at least a
single line of message "Merge branch 'foo'", possibly followed by
the summary  the side branch being merged, so unless the user
deliberately removes everything and then add a sign-off line
(because we do not usually add one), there is no room for "such
surprises" in the first place.  It does not _hurt_ to diagnose such
a crazy case, but it feels a bit lower priority.

It's little unfortunate that I haven't mentioned the reason I asked the
question that has resulted in this patch. It would explain a little
about why I thought this wasn't "meh" (I hope it stands for "who care
what ever").

Sometimes I abort an commit from from the editor by providing an empty
commit message. Then I came to know that 'git commit' considers commit
messages with just signed-off-by lines as an empty message. I tried to
take advantage of that. I once tried to abort a merge by just removing
the "Merge ..." line and leaving the "Signed-off" line and was
surprised to see the merge happen instead of an abort. The rest is
history. :)

-- 
Kaartic