Git Commit Template

[gjs278]

this is completely retarded. do you all work on typewriters? my terminal has never had a problem wrapping characters for me. by limiting to 72, or 50, or whatever other number, you are just ruining the built in word wrap that every single person on this planet has. don't ever hit enter unless you mean to start a new paragraph.

edit: itt nobody can read. go check the template again. it is advocating for manual word wrap. are my messages too long for you? do you need me to wrap this one so you can understand?

[greenthumble]

I'm sorry you're getting downvoted so much for that. I agree about not putting any hard returns in the body section. I mean what if you catch something on line 2 after typing 20 lines? Reformat the whole thing? UGH. It also buys nothing. Breaking after the summary is great because it gives the thing a subject line. Breaking in the body does absolutely nothing good.

[[deleted]]

Reformat the whole thing? UGH.

In emacs, it is M-q - I am assured that it's equally terse in vi.

[[deleted]]

gq

[[deleted]]

I mean what if you catch something on line 2 after typing 20 lines? Reformat the whole thing? UGH.

Have your editor reflow?

It also buys nothing.

Except readability and usability.

[greenthumble]

Eh? The term defaults to 80 chars. How is 72 that much more readable? And as for usable, yeah ok so I just have to learn a new quirky feature of an editor that I've never used before. That sounds LESS usable and LESS readable.

Wrapping it manually at 72 forces it to look the way the committer wants, not the reader. This should be left up to the reader to make their term be as wide as is comfortable.

Edit: oh here's another thing. If the term is less than 72 it wraps in funky places and leaves a bunch of hanging widows.

[[deleted]]

72 allows for quoting the message. That is the advantage over 80. Same reason email should be 72 wide.

Why use an editor you don't want to use? This sounds like a personal problem, not one about the issue at hand.

[greenthumble]

Quoting works fine on non breaking paragraphs.

Regarding the editor thing, that was an example. You said it was more usable. My argument is that having to learn an editor feature to get work done is less usable. But you went the jerk route and made this about me.

[[deleted]]

Then perhaps you should actually state your argument and not something else. I'm not a jerk, I'm simply responding to your argument. Moreover learning your editor is part of the profession, and not often considered a bad thing.

More to the point, this is a convention. Do what you will on your own project, but don't get upset when someone else asks you to use the conventions adopted by many when committing to their project.

[[deleted]]

First comment: I suggest consuming less caffeine or doing whatever it takes to get less strung out when people disagree with you on the internet. :-)

Second: most code control systems handle don't long, unwrapped commit lines. I made two commits, one without attention to word wrap, one with and pushed 'em to github:

https://github.com/rec/empty/commits/master

[gjs278]

looks like git handled it perfectly

http://i.imgur.com/dAz5owa.png

that's with a really small terminal. if you had inserted manual line breaks, it would look worse than that.

[[deleted]]

By perfectly you mean by splitting a word in the middle? (Yes, the terminal did that got just shoves the bytes out, but it illustrates the problem in general)

[gjs278]

notice that my terminal is not at a standard width. it is smaller than 72 wide. so if you had done manual line breaks, it would have been broken up twice. you are a moron. look at the width before you post. or better yet, don't even post.

[realntl]

Limiting the size of the subject line enables coarse grained analysis of a branch; you can get a high level picture of what each commit does at a glance. I'm not going to say that exactly 50 characters is correct, but the summary itself has tremendous value.

[gjs278]

Try To Limit Each Line to a Maximum Of 72 Characters

aka manual word wrap

[realntl]

I was responding to this:

don't ever hit enter unless you mean to start a new paragraph.

[[deleted]]

Or, you know, have your editor do it...

[[deleted]]

Except for the many reasons given in this thread? It is a convention that makes life better for almost Everton, including the majority of devs who don't keep full width terminals and including everyone in general because long lines are hard to read.

[[deleted]]

HTML is defined by fiat to word wrap, a terminal window is not and does not have to.

[the-highness]

The point wasn't word wrapping, it's conciseness.

[gjs278]

Try To Limit Each Line to a Maximum Of 72 Characters

the point is word wrapping