merge: add instructions to the commit message when editingtr/merge-edit-guidance

Before f824628 (merge: use editor by default in interactive sessions,
2012-01-10), git-merge only started an editor if the user explicitly
asked for it with --edit.  Thus it seemed unlikely that the user would
need extra guidance.

After f824628 the _normal_ thing is to start an editor.  Give at least
an indication of why we are doing it.

The sentence about justification is one of the few things about
standard git that are not agnostic to the workflow that the user
chose.  However, f824628 was proposed by Linus specifically to
discourage users from merging unrelated upstream progress into topic
branches.  So we may as well take another step in the same direction.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/builtin/merge.c b/builtin/merge.c
index 3a451727d0..41d835e3f7 100644
--- a/builtin/merge.c
+++ b/builtin/merge.c
@@ -885,11 +885,21 @@ static void abort_commit(const char *err_msg)
 	exit(1);
 }
 
+static const char merge_editor_comment[] =
+N_("Please enter a commit message to explain why this merge is necessary,\n"
+   "especially if it merges an updated upstream into a topic branch.\n"
+   "\n"
+   "Lines starting with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts\n"
+   "the commit.\n");
+
 static void prepare_to_commit(void)
 {
 	struct strbuf msg = STRBUF_INIT;
+	const char *comment = _(merge_editor_comment);
 	strbuf_addbuf(&msg, &merge_msg);
 	strbuf_addch(&msg, '\n');
+	if (0 < option_edit)
+		strbuf_add_lines(&msg, "# ", comment, strlen(comment));
 	write_merge_msg(&msg);
 	run_hook(get_index_file(), "prepare-commit-msg",
 		 git_path("MERGE_MSG"), "merge", NULL, NULL);