bug#68691: 30.0.50; [WISHLIST] Make it easier to conform to desired commit message format

[Po Lu]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> FWIW, I'll not be working on such a mode myself, as I'd rather see that
> we promoted useful commit messages in the style of, say, the Linux
> kernel instead of the GNU ChangeLog format.  It is simply redundant to
> enumerate changed files when using a modern distributed VCS like Git.
> But that's my personal opinion, and not currently that of the project.

I think part of our position is that it is far too easy to write
uninformative commit messages when one is not being forced to mentally
review the commit's contents.  As with any other form of discipline,
maintaining ChangeLog discipline is an end in itself, not necessarily
something that might produce an immediate benefit.  See FreeType's
experience:

  https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype-devel/2013-04/msg00046.html
  https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype-devel/2020-07/msg00032.html

A hook run before each commit is a good idea, and I plan to study how
they are written.