How to Auto Strip Git Comments

24 Mar 2019 git

I recently acquired a new mac at work and soon realised that I was missing my familiar git template with commit message good form hints. In addition after a subsequent merge failed the fix with its commit retained the git warning comments in the message when they used to be removed. For posterity sake the .gitconfig needs the following lines:

[commit]
        template = /Users/ewan/.gitmessage.txt
        cleanup = strip

The template file may be named whatever you choose. Mine has the following to remind to prefix with the change type.

# Must be one of the following followed as a summary by a newline and then detail if required:

# feat: A new feature
# fix: A bug fix
# docs: Documentation only changes
# style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
# refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug or adds a feature
# test: Adding missing tests
# chore: Changes to the build process or auxiliary tools and libraries such as documentation generation

By default a git cleanup will strip line comments that start with #. This can be changed with the commentChar in the git config.

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