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

Kaartic Sivaraam [off-list ref] writes:

I have a few doubts for which I need clarification to move on with
this.

    1. If we abort when the <message> part is empty wouldn't it be too
    restrictive ?

    IOW, Wouldn't it affect users of "git commit -‍-cleanup=verbatim"
    who wish to commit only the comments or parts of it ?
    (I'm not sure if someone would find that useful)

    2. Is it ok to use the "find_trailer_start" function of "trailer.c"
    to locate the trailer? 

    Note: It has a little issue that it wouldn't detect the trailer if
    the message comprises of one trailer alone and no other text. This
    case occurs while aborting a commit started using "git commit -s".
    Any possibilities to overcome the issue?

    3. Ignoring point 1 for now, What other helper methods except the
    ones listed below could be helpful in the separating the cleaned up
    commit message into the <message>, <trailer>, <junk-at-tail> ?

        * ignore_non_trailer
        * find_trailer_start

All good points; if it bothers you that "commit" and "merge" define
"emptyness" of the buffer differently too much, I think you could
persuade me to unify them to "the buffer _must_ contain no bytes",
i.e. not special-casing sign-off lines only "commit".

It would be a backward incompatible tightening of the established
rule, but it may not be a bad change.