Re: [PATCH] merge: use editor by default in interactive sessions

[Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>]

On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:18:40 -0800, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Traditionally, a cleanly resolved merge was committed by "git merge" using
> the auto-generated merge commit log message with invoking the editor.
> 
> After 5 years of use in the field, it turns out that people perform too
> many unjustified merges of the upstream history into their topic branches.
> These merges are not just useless, but they are often not explained well,
> and making the end result unreadable when it gets time for merging their
> history back to their upstream.

Ok, so I'm late to the party and perhaps I missed the discussion about
this, but...

I think the proposed commit message should have a comment, just like for
an ordinary commit, that explains why we are showing the user an editor.
(I'm too lazy to check, but I suspect we *always* give a comment about
what is going on when we fire up an editor.)

I would suggest something like

# Please enter the commit message for your merge commit.  Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.

or if you feel comfortable with educating the user in a
workflow-specific way, even

# Please enter the commit message for your merge commit.  You should
# justify it especially if it merges an updated upstream into a topic
# branch.
# 
# Lines starting with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts
# the commit.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch