Is there a way to accumulate a commit message with git while examing changes?

Question

I use "git add -p" to stage my changes. What I'd like to be able to do is to accumulate a commit message as I'm examining my changes and then when I call "git commit", it is already filled out for me and allows me to make changes before I commit.

Now, its easy to do with git gui by simply examining the changes and editing the commit message text box accordingly, but I'm a command line guy and was wondering if this is possible at the command line.

Answer 1

git add doesn't offer that functionality, but you could try some other options:

• use git commit -v to have the diff displayed so you get remembered what you are about to commit
• make small commits in a private branch, then squash them in a git rebase -i.
• use another editor to populate .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG. This will be used as a template when you do commit. I believe this way is messy and not much easier than writing down the pieces in a file anywhere and loading when you commit (for vi use `:r filename).

Answer 2

git commit can take a F (or --file) option that specifies that the commit message should be taken from a file. So you could add your changes, update a file in which you record your message, and then pass that filename to git commit -F <file>.

That doesn't sound like exactly what you want, but it could be a decent workaround.