Writing ChangeLog-style commit messages with Magit

Writing ChangeLog-style commit messages with Magit

[Federico Tedin]

Hi all,

I was wondering what's the best way of writing ChangeLog-style commit
messages with Magit. Currently, I'm aware of these options:

- Use "C-x 4 a" to add entries into the ChangeLog file, and then copy
  those over to the commit message buffer when I'm about to create a
  commit.

- Use "C" while on the diff buffer like described here by Jonas:
  https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/13753/insert-changelog-entries-in-commit-message
  That post is from 2015 though (and according to him "it's not very
  good"), so maybe it's outdated.

- Write and structure the commit message manually (adding change
  descriptions per file/symbol)

So far I've been writing the commit messages manually (just found out
about "C-x 4 a"), so I wanted to know if anyone has a workflow similar
to the first one in the list, or maybe something more automated.

Thanks.

- Fede

Re: Writing ChangeLog-style commit messages with Magit

[Paul Eggert]

On 2/16/20 10:19 AM, Federico Tedin wrote:
> So far I've been writing the commit messages manually (just found out
> about "C-x 4 a"), so I wanted to know if anyone has a workflow similar
> to the first one in the list, or maybe something more automated.

I use C-x 4 a combined with 'vc-dwim' and 'vc-dwim --commit' 
<https://www.gnu.org/software/vc-dwim/>.

Re: Writing ChangeLog-style commit messages with Magit

[Tassilo Horn]

Federico Tedin <federicotedin@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Federico,

> I was wondering what's the best way of writing ChangeLog-style commit
> messages with Magit.

Magit supports that out of the box!  Initiate a commit, and then hit C
(`magit-commit-add-log') in the shown diff buffer which will generate a
ChangeLog-style commit message line for the hunk under point in the
commit message buffer.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Writing ChangeLog-style commit messages with Magit

[Federico Tedin]

Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:
> I use C-x 4 a combined with 'vc-dwim' and 'vc-dwim --commit'
> <https://www.gnu.org/software/vc-dwim/>.

Thanks! Just noticed it's mentioned in the CONTRIBUTE file, hadn't
realized before.

Tassilo Horn <tsdh@gnu.org> writes:
> Magit supports that out of the box!  Initiate a commit, and then hit C
> (`magit-commit-add-log') in the shown diff buffer which will generate a
> ChangeLog-style commit message line for the hunk under point in the
> commit message buffer.
>
> Bye,
> Tassilo

This is what was mentioned in the SO link I posted, but it seems to be
the best way there currently is to do this via Magit. Thanks for the
tip!

- Fede

Re: Writing ChangeLog-style commit messages with Magit

[Noam Postavsky]

On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 at 13:19, Federico Tedin <federicotedin@gmail.com> wrote:

> - Use "C" while on the diff buffer like described here by Jonas:
>   https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/13753/insert-changelog-entries-in-commit-message

> - Write and structure the commit message manually (adding change
>   descriptions per file/symbol)
>
> So far I've been writing the commit messages manually (just found out
> about "C-x 4 a"), so I wanted to know if anyone has a workflow similar
> to the first one in the list, or maybe something more automated.

In Emacs 27, there is a somewhat more automated workflow available
from VC as C-c C-w. I have some not-quite-finalized code for using
this functionality from magit at
https://github.com/magit/magit/pull/3928.

There is also a link there to another slightly different approach:
https://github.com/dickmao/magit-patch-changelog (I haven't really
looked at it closely enough to say what the differences are though)

Re: Writing ChangeLog-style commit messages with Magit

[dick.r.chiang]

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