# Re: Re: \[PATCH v11 2/2\] am: support --empty=\<option\> to handle empty patches

- From: Elijah Newren \<hidden\>
- Date: 2021-11-29 20:35:56 
- List: git
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/git/2021/11/7913341
- Thread: https://ratatoskr.run/git/2021/11/7911250/t.md

```text
On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 2:00 AM Aleen 徐沛文 [ref] wrote:
>
> It is quite complicated to support 'git commit --allow-empty' extracting messages
> from an empty patch, because 'git am' has to find somewhere to store the parsed state
> for 'git commit' to read.

.git/COMMIT_EDITMSG is such a place that already exists, assuming you
are just extracting a commit message.

> How about directly supporting another interactive option
> '--allow-empty' for 'git am' to keep recording?

--empty=keep was already part of your patch series; I don't see why
you'd need to add a synonym (--allow-empty) for it.

I think you were trying to ask if you could just leave out the
implementation of --empty=ask (or --empty=die) from your patches.
That's usually fine, but there is a small wrinkle here since it was
your chosen default.  You'll have to pick a different default, and
possibly alert users in the documentation that the default may change
in the future if/when the other option is implemented.

> > Dears Hamano,
> >
> >    Elijah Newren has given two better suggestions:
> >
> >        1. Use 'ask' rather than 'die'
> >        2. When erroring out 'Patch is empty', print out a tutorial information
> >           to help users using 'git commit --allow-empty' to keep recording as
> >           an empty commit.
> >
> >    Should we continue to implement these features in current PR?
> >
> > Aleen
```