Re: [PATCH v4 11/11] doc: interpret-trailers: document comment line treatment

Hi Kristoffer,

On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 5:22 AM <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <[email protected]>
>
> Comment lines have always been ignored but this is not documented.
>
> The primary motivation here is to reasonably complete in the

"to be"?

> documentation of how trailers are parsed; this is after all the only
> documentation page that documents this format. However, and going beyond
> that point, we could imagine that someone would want to use this format
> outside a commit (or tag) message context, like say in Git notes.
>
> On the other hand, it seems far-fetched that someone would be caught
> off guard by this considering that comment characters/strings are not
> likely to be alphanumeric,[1] which would mean that these comment lines
> would be treated as non-trailer lines if they were *not* detected and
> removed as comment lines.
>
> † 1: A notable exception is that Jujutsu VCS uses `JJ:` as
>      the comment string
>
> Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <[email protected]>
> ---
>
> Notes (series):
>     v4:
>     • Msg: rewrite motivation for documenting this. The motivation is
>       not super solid, but it reflects my own ambiguity on the matter,
>       so to speak; I think we ought to be very thorough about
>       documenting the format, while making sure to not use the main text
>       to exhaustively lay it all out. The information should be
>       somewhere in this doc. But not in your face.

I agree we should be thorough but not in your face, esp. based on the
work Julia Evans has done in the past around Git documentation.
Thanks!

>     • Msg: Add “(or tag) message”. See patch “not just for commit
>       messages” where trailer support for tag messages are mentioned.
>
[snip]

-- 
D. Ben Knoble