On Fri, 2017-07-14 at 23:19 +0530, Kaartic Sivaraam wrote: > * Imagine a hypothetical version of git that aborts when the > <message> is empty though a <trailer> is present. This would > quite possibly instigate controversies as the "hypothetical git" > reduces the "valid commit messages" and would quite possibly > reject a commit message as "empty" (which is uncommunicative) > though a previous version (which did not have this change) > accepted a similar message. > > SO, bringing in the Occam's razor, let's choose the option that's > the simplest and makes the fewest assumptions. I would like to add a little to the "making fewer assumptions" point. If we make the fewest assumptions possible, it has quite a few advantages, * It would make the implementation that checks for an empty message, trivial. Thus reducing the complexity of the code. * It would not overload the meaning of the error message, Aborting due to empty commit message. Thus making the sentence stand for what it means "literally". (BTW, I guess an "an" is missing in the message) * It allows for others to have more freedom in defining what a commit message should have using the appropriate hook(s). IOW, let us do the minimal check(message consisting only of whitespaces) and let the others define what a commit message should have using the "commit-msg" hook. -- Kaartic