Use commit message for pull request message

[aaronjensen]

Both github and magit-gh-pulls use some combination of commit messages as the default message for a pull request if there is no template.

Specifically, I like github's behavior where, in the case of a single commit PR, the commit's message becomes the PR's title and description.

It'd be great if magithub did something similar. Thanks!

[vermiculus]

I've been wanting to do something like this, too – I've legitimately been copy/pasting the commit title into the PR body when I open one. Very boring 😄

The only hesitation I've had is that I want to insert the full commit log between BASE and HEAD; I've yet to figure out how to do that. I'll prioritize it this weekend.

[vermiculus]

Hey @tarsius – do you know off the top of your head if there's anything in magit that would help me here? Otherwise I think I just have to run a git log command myself (not a big deal; I just don't want to re-do existing work).

[tarsius]

I cannot think of anything that Magit provides. Instead of git log you probably can use git show -q instead.

[vermiculus]

What does -q do? I can't find it in the git-show manpage.

[tarsius]

Maybe it has --quiet instead? If I remember correctly that suppresses the diff.

[vermiculus]

That is, an isearch on -q showed no results. It's not online, either. Sounds like a ticket to git for an undocumented option? 😉

[tarsius]

Or maybe I was wrong. You might want to test it before sending a mail. 😉

[vermiculus]

git show -q definitely does something. It looks like it just shows HEAD.

[tarsius]

What you want is git show -q --format=%b REV (instead of git log --oneline -1 --format=%b REV, which you didn't spell out completely, which is why I omitted the details too).

[vermiculus]

Still looks like git-show only shows one commit.

I had something like git log --format=%H%n%B master..HEAD in mind (where the master would be the BASE branch). I.e., if I'm merging two commits:

deadbeefhash1
commit title

body...

deadbeefhash2
commit title

body...

[tarsius]

Still looks like git-show only shows one commit.

Ah, I thought you wanted that. (Github only ever uses the commit message as template if the pr has only one commit.)

[vermiculus]

Which I think is silly 😄 we can do better.

Unless... do you think it would be better UX to just show a magit-log of changes to be merged in a buffer on the side? (And defaulting in the commit message if it's just one commit?)

[aaronjensen]

FWIW, magit-gh-pulls uses the short message of all commits in the PR. I always delete them. Always. I've never wanted to open a PR w/ a list of my commits. I sometimes leave the first commit as the title in the case where I do a thing that is the main point of the PR, then commit it, then commit some other fix/cleanup/etc.

But usually I just delete them.

The one nice thing with it, however, is that I see an overview of all of my commits which may help me name my PR.

[vermiculus]

But usually I just delete them.

So not in the edit buffer, then. Would you not want it even there's only one commit? (i.e., HEAD~1 = BASE)

The one nice thing with it, however, is that I see an overview of all of my commits which may help me name my PR.

So definitely a plus for showing (magit-log "BASE..HEAD" (magit-log-arguments)).

[aaronjensen]

If it's just one commit, I'd love for its commit message to be the default PR message in the edit buffer.

[vermiculus]

Here's a question: what should we do if there's a PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE?

[vermiculus]

My gut instinct is to just append the template to whatever we have.

[aaronjensen]

IMO use it for the body and use the commit message first line for the title? Is that what GH does? I'd probably just do exactly what GH does.

[aaronjensen]

thinking about it more, I like your idea. append the template to the first commit message--that works for me.

[vermiculus]

This is definitely one of those features I'm so glad to have done; it adds way more to the experience than I expected. Thanks for the issue!

[aaronjensen]

Thanks!

[aaronjensen]

I finally got around to testing this and it doesn't appear to work. Is there a var I have to set? I have a PR template in my repo

[aaronjensen]

actually, it did work, I had to pick master instead of HEAD. I'm not sure why HEAD is an option--it doesn't appear to work to create prs against... i would have thought it was the default branch

[vermiculus]

As discussed in #264, HEAD shouldn't be an option. I'm investigating; thanks for the report 👍

[humitos]

@vermiculus looking for this feature I arrived here. Do I have to enable it in some way? I don't know why it's not working in my emacs.

[vermiculus]

It should work out of the box if you're just merging one commit. If you're merging multiple commits, there's no good way to choose a commit message, so we just show the commits you're about to request to merge. The only stuff you'd have to 'turn on' should be listed in magithub-feature-list.