Explicitly add new lines in message content

[jcfr (Jean Christophe Fillion Robin (Kitware))]

To facilitate reading of history using either git log, gitk, … I suggest we consistently format commit messages by explicitly adding newlines.

without newlines:

with newlines

[cpinter (Csaba Pinter)]

Is there a commit hook that can do that?

[jcfr (Jean Christophe Fillion Robin (Kitware))]

Not that I am aware.

Using git gui (or any git frontend) should allow to easily format the message before running git svn dcommit.

Text editor like vim, emacs can also be configured to wrap lines while editing.

[lassoan (Andras Lasso)]

I like that I can take advantage of whatever screen size I have (if I make my window wider I see longer lines) and adding line breaks manually is a chore, but if everybody prefers short lines then I’m OK with it.

We have some hooks for checking commit message format (starts with ENH: …) but maybe that’s only for SVN?

[cpinter (Csaba Pinter)]

@jcfr

(or any git frontend) should allow to easily format the message

Not true for TortoiseGit, which is the one I use (and most of the Windows people I know).

In general I find these limitations about line length unreasonable, especially introducing new ones. That said I can hit enter once in a while if that’s what the community requires.

[cpinter (Csaba Pinter)]

Just one more note here. I think the deficiency of the Git GUI application is not that it doesn’t hard-break the lines, but that it doesn’t wrap them when displaying. For example this is how I see it: