The shell used when using the -x option is erroneously documented to be
the one pointed to by the $SHELL environmental variable. This was true
when rebase was implemented as a shell script but this is no longer
true.
Signed-off-by: Nikolay Borisov <nik.borisov@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Documentation should mention the default behavior.
It is better to explain the persistent nature of the
--reschedule-failed-exec flag from the user standpoint, rather than from
the implementation standpoint.
Signed-off-by: Illia Bobyr <illia.bobyr@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Since commit 62db5247 (rebase -i: generate the script via
rebase--helper, 2017-07-14), the short hash is given in
rebase-todo. Specifying rebase.instructionFormat does not alter this
behavior, contrary to what the documentation implies.
Signed-off-by: Maarten van der Schrieck <maarten@thingsconnected.nl>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Rewrite the description of the rebase --(no-)autosquash options to try
to make it a bit clearer. Don't use "the '...'" to refer to part of a
commit message, mention how --interactive can be used to review the
todo list, and add a bit more detail on commit --squash/amend.
Signed-off-by: Andy Koppe <andy.koppe@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The rebase --autosquash option is quietly ignored when used without
--interactive (apart from preventing preemptive fast-forwarding and
triggering conflicts with apply backend options).
Change that to support --autosquash without --interactive, by dropping
its restriction to REBASE_INTERACTIVE_EXCPLICIT mode. When used this
way, auto-squashing is done without opening the todo list editor.
Drop the -i requirement from the --autosquash description, and amend
t3415-rebase-autosquash.sh to test the option and the rebase.autoSquash
config variable with and without -i.
Signed-off-by: Andy Koppe <andy.koppe@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Use parentheses and pipes to present alternatives in the argument help
for the --empty options of git am and git rebase, like in the rest of
the documentation.
While at it remove a stray use of the enum empty_action value
STOP_ON_EMPTY_COMMIT to indicate that no short option is present.
While it has a value of 0 and thus there is no user-visible change,
that enum is not meant to hold short option characters. Hard-code 0,
like we do for other options without a short option.
Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The purpose of the new option is to accommodate users who would like
--rebase-merges to be on by default and to facilitate turning on
--rebase-merges by default without configuration in a future version of
Git.
Name the new option rebase.rebaseMerges, even though it is a little
redundant, for consistency with the name of the command line option and
to be clear when scrolling through values in the [rebase] section of
.gitconfig.
Support setting rebase.rebaseMerges to the nonspecific value "true" for
users who don't need to or don't want to learn about the difference
between rebase-cousins and no-rebase-cousins.
Make --rebase-merges without an argument on the command line override
any value of rebase.rebaseMerges in the configuration, for consistency
with other command line flags with optional arguments that have an
associated config option.
Signed-off-by: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
As far as I can tell, --no-rebase-merges has always worked, but has
never been documented. It is especially important to document it before
a rebase.rebaseMerges option is introduced so that users know how to
override the config option on the command line. It's also important to
clarify that --rebase-merges without an argument is not the same as
--no-rebase-merges and not passing --rebase-merges is not the same as
passing --rebase-merges=no-rebase-cousins.
A test case is necessary to make sure that --no-rebase-merges keeps
working after its code is refactored in the following patches of this
series. The test case is a little contrived: It's unlikely that a user
would type both --rebase-merges and --no-rebase-merges at the same time.
However, if an alias is defined which includes --rebase-merges, the user
might decide to add --no-rebase-merges to countermand that part of the
alias but leave alone other flags set by the alias.
Signed-off-by: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
When config which selects the merge backend (currently,
rebase.autosquash=true or rebase.updateRefs=true) conflicts with other
options on the command line (such as --whitespace=fix), make the error
message specifically call out the config option and specify how to
override that config option on the command line.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Commit ce5238a690 ("rebase --keep-base: imply --reapply-cherry-picks",
2022-10-17) accidentally added some blank lines that cause extra
paragraphs about --reapply-cherry-picks to be considered not part of
the documentation of that option. Remove the blank lines to make it
clear we are still discussing --reapply-cherry-picks.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
--edit-todo was documented as being incompatible with any of the options
for the apply backend. However, it is also incompatible with any of the
options for the merge backend, and is incompatible with any options that
are not backend specific as well. The same can be said for --continue,
--skip, --abort, --quit, etc.
This is already somewhat implicitly covered by the synopsis, but since
"[<options>]" in the first two variants are vague it might be easy to
miss this. That might not be a big deal, but since the rebase manpage
has to spend so much verbiage about incompatibility of options, making
a separate section for these options that are incompatible with
everything else seems clearer. Do that, and remove the needless
inclusion of --edit-todo in the explicit incompatibility list.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
--[no-]reapply-cherry-picks was traditionally only supported by the
sequencer. Support was added for the apply backend, when --keep-base is
also specified, in commit ce5238a690 ("rebase --keep-base: imply
--reapply-cherry-picks", 2022-10-17). Make the code error out when
--[no-]reapply-cherry-picks is specified AND the apply backend is used
AND --keep-base is not specified. Also, clarify a number of comments
surrounding the interaction of these flags.
Helped-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In commit 5dacd4abdd ("git-rebase.txt: document incompatible options",
2018-06-25), I added notes about incompatibilities between options for
the apply and merge backends. Unfortunately, I inverted the condition
when --root was incompatible with the apply backend. Fix the
documentation, and add a testcase that verifies the documentation
matches the code.
While at it, the documentation for --root also tried to cover some of
the backend differences between the apply and merge backends in relation
to reapplying cherry picks. The information:
* assumed that the apply backend was the default (it isn't anymore)
* was written before --reapply-cherry-picks became an option
* was written before the detailed information on backend differences
All of these factors make the sentence under --root about reapplying
cherry picks contradict information that is now available elsewhere in
the manual, and the other references are correct. So just strike this
sentence.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
--allow-empty-message was turned into a no-op and even documented
as such; the flag is simply ignored. Since the flag is ignored, it
shouldn't be documented as being incompatible with other flags.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
--update-refs is built in terms of the sequencer, which requires the
merge backend. It was already marked as incompatible with the apply
backend in the git-rebase manual, but the code didn't check for this
incompatibility and warn the user. Check and error now.
While at it, fix a typo in t3422...and fix some misleading wording
(most options which used to be am-specific have since been implemented
in the merge backend as well).
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
'ORIG_HEAD' is written at the start of the rebase, but is not guaranteed
to still point to the original branch tip at the end of the rebase.
Indeed, using other commands that write 'ORIG_HEAD' during the rebase,
like splitting a commit using 'git reset HEAD^', will lead to 'ORIG_HEAD'
being overwritten. This causes confusion for some users [1].
Add a note about that in the 'Description' section, and mention the more
robust alternative of using the branch's reflog.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/28ebf03b-e8bb-3769-556b-c9db17e43dbb@gmail.com/T/#m827179c5adcfb504d67f76d03c8e6942b55e5ed0
Reported-by: Erik Cervin Edin <erik@cervined.in>
Signed-off-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git rebase --keep-base" used to discard the commits that are
already cherry-picked to the upstream, even when "keep-base" meant
that the base, on top of which the history is being rebuilt, does
not yet include these cherry-picked commits. The --keep-base
option now implies --reapply-cherry-picks and --no-fork-point
options.
* pw/rebase-keep-base-fixes:
rebase --keep-base: imply --no-fork-point
rebase --keep-base: imply --reapply-cherry-picks
rebase: factor out branch_base calculation
rebase: rename merge_base to branch_base
rebase: store orig_head as a commit
rebase: be stricter when reading state files containing oids
t3416: set $EDITOR in subshell
t3416: tighten two tests
Given the name of the option it is confusing if --keep-base actually
changes the base of the branch without --fork-point being explicitly
given on the command line.
The combination of --keep-base with an explicit --fork-point is still
supported even though --fork-point means we do not keep the same base
if the upstream branch has been rewound. We do this in case anyone is
relying on this behavior which is tested in t3431[1]
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/20200715032014.GA10818@generichostname/
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
As --keep-base does not rebase the branch it is confusing if it
removes commits that have been cherry-picked to the upstream branch.
As --reapply-cherry-picks is not supported by the "apply" backend this
commit ensures that cherry-picks are reapplied by forcing the upstream
commit to match the onto commit unless --no-reapply-cherry-picks is
given.
Reported-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Share the text used to explain configuration variables used by "git
<subcmd>" in "git help <subcmd>" with the text from "git help config".
* ab/dedup-config-and-command-docs:
docs: add CONFIGURATION sections that fuzzy map to built-ins
docs: add CONFIGURATION sections that map to a built-in
log docs: de-duplicate configuration sections
difftool docs: de-duplicate configuration sections
notes docs: de-duplicate and combine configuration sections
apply docs: de-duplicate configuration sections
send-email docs: de-duplicate configuration sections
grep docs: de-duplicate configuration sections
docs: add and use include template for config/* includes
In b6a8d09f6d (gc docs: include the "gc.*" section from "config" in
"gc", 2019-04-07) the "git gc" documentation was made to include the
config/gc.txt in its "CONFIGURATION" section. We do that in several
other places, but "git gc" was the only one with a blurb above the
include to orient the reader.
We don't want readers to carefully scrutinize "git-config(1)" and
"git-gc(1)" looking for discrepancies, instead we should tell them
that the latter includes a part of the former.
This change formalizes that wording in two new templates to be
included, one for the "git gc" case where the entire section is
included from "git-config(1)", and another for when the inclusion of
"git-config(1)" follows discussion unique to that documentation. In
order to use that re-arrange the order of those being discussed in the
"git-merge(1)" documentation.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Matheus Tavares <matheus.bernardino@usp.br>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The `--rerere-autoupdate` option is shared across 5 commands, and
are described the same way because it works exactly the same way in
these commands.
Create a separate file and include it from the help pages for these
commands, so that we can improve the description at one place to
improve all of them at once, and keep them in sync.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git rebase -i" learns to update branches whose tip appear in the
rebased range with "--update-refs" option.
source: <pull.1247.v5.git.1658255624.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>
* ds/rebase-update-ref:
sequencer: notify user of --update-refs activity
sequencer: ignore HEAD ref under --update-refs
rebase: add rebase.updateRefs config option
sequencer: rewrite update-refs as user edits todo list
rebase: update refs from 'update-ref' commands
rebase: add --update-refs option
sequencer: add update-ref command
sequencer: define array with enum values
rebase-interactive: update 'merge' description
branch: consider refs under 'update-refs'
t2407: test branches currently using apply backend
t2407: test bisect and rebase as black-boxes
The previous change added the --update-refs command-line option. For
users who always want this mode, create the rebase.updateRefs config
option which behaves the same way as rebase.autoSquash does with the
--autosquash option.
Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <derrickstolee@github.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
When working on a large feature, it can be helpful to break that feature
into multiple smaller parts that become reviewed in sequence. During
development or during review, a change to one part of the feature could
affect multiple of these parts. An interactive rebase can help adjust
the multi-part "story" of the branch.
However, if there are branches tracking the different parts of the
feature, then rebasing the entire list of commits can create commits not
reachable from those "sub branches". It can take a manual step to update
those branches.
Add a new --update-refs option to 'git rebase -i' that adds 'update-ref
<ref>' steps to the todo file whenever a commit that is being rebased is
decorated with that <ref>. At the very end, the rebase process updates
all of the listed refs to the values stored during the rebase operation.
Be sure to iterate after any squashing or fixups are placed. Update the
branch only after those squashes and fixups are complete. This allows a
--fixup commit at the tip of the feature to apply correctly to the sub
branch, even if it is fixing up the most-recent commit in that part.
This change update the documentation and builtin to accept the
--update-refs option as well as updating the todo file with the
'update-ref' commands. Tests are added to ensure that these todo
commands are added in the correct locations.
This change does _not_ include the actual behavior of tracking the
updated refs and writing the new ref values at the end of the rebase
process. That is deferred to a later change.
Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <derrickstolee@github.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
While inspecting the 'git rebase' documentation, I noticed that it is
inconsistent with how it uses back-ticks (or other punctuation) for
identifying Git commands, command-line arguments, or values for those
arguments.
Sometimes, an argument (like '--interactive') would appear without any
punctuation, causing the argument to not have any special formatting.
Other times, arguments or 'git rebase' itself would have single-quotes
giving a bold look (in the HTML documentation at least).
By consistently using back-ticks, these types of strings appear in a
monospace font with special highlighting to appear more clearly as text
that exists in a command-line invocation of a Git command.
This rather-large diff is the result of scanning git-rebase.txt and
adding back-ticks as appropriate. Some are adding back-ticks where there
was no punctuation. Others are replacing single quotes.
There are also a few minor cleanups in the process, including those
found by reviewers.
Helped-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>
Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Derrick Stolee <derrickstolee@github.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
--keep-base rebases onto the merge base of the given upstream and the
current HEAD regardless of whether a branch is given. This is contrary
to the documentation and to the option's intended purpose. Instead,
rebase onto the merge base of the given upstream and the given branch.
Signed-off-by: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The "--preserve-merges" option of "git rebase" has been removed.
* js/retire-preserve-merges:
sequencer: restrict scope of a formerly public function
rebase: remove a no-longer-used function
rebase: stop mentioning the -p option in comments
rebase: remove obsolete code comment
rebase: drop the internal `rebase--interactive` command
git-svn: drop support for `--preserve-merges`
rebase: drop support for `--preserve-merges`
pull: remove support for `--rebase=preserve`
tests: stop testing `git rebase --preserve-merges`
remote: warn about unhandled branch.<name>.rebase values
t5520: do not use `pull.rebase=preserve`
The configuration option `rebase.forkpoint' is only mentioned in the man
page of git-config(1). Since it is a configuration for rebase, mention
it in the documentation of rebase at the --fork-point/--no-fork-point
section. This will help users set a preferred default for their
workflow.
Signed-off-by: Wesley Schwengle <wesley@opperschaap.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git rebase" by default skips changes that are equivalent to
commits that are already in the history the branch is rebased onto;
give messages when this happens to let the users be aware of
skipped commits, and also teach them how to tell "rebase" to keep
duplicated changes.
* js/advise-when-skipping-cherry-picked:
sequencer: advise if skipping cherry-picked commit
This option was deprecated in favor of `--rebase-merges` some time ago,
and now we retire it.
To assist users to transition away, we do not _actually_ remove the
option, but now we no longer implement the functionality. Instead, we
offer a helpful error message suggesting which option to use.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Reviewed-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Silently skipping commits when rebasing with --no-reapply-cherry-picks
(currently the default behavior) can cause user confusion. Issue
warnings when this happens, as well as advice on how to preserve the
skipped commits.
These warnings and advice are displayed only when using the (default)
"merge" rebase backend.
Update the git-rebase docs to mention the warnings and advice.
Signed-off-by: Josh Steadmon <steadmon@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Make it clear that `ort` is the default merge strategy now rather than
`recursive`, including moving `ort` to the front of the list of merge
strategies.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Commit 58634dbff8 ("rebase: Allow merge strategies to be used when
rebasing", 2006-06-21) added the --merge option to git-rebase so that
renames could be detected (at least when using the `recursive` merge
backend). However, git-am -3 gained that same ability in commit
579c9bb198 ("Use merge-recursive in git-am -3.", 2006-12-28). As such,
the comment about being able to detect renames is not particularly
noteworthy. Remove it.
Acked-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Acked-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
A few places in the documentation referred to the "`recursive` strategy"
using the phrase "`git merge-recursive`", suggesting that it was forking
subprocesses to call a toplevel builtin. Perhaps that was relevant to
when rebase was a shell script, but it seems like a rather indirect way
to refer to the `recursive` strategy. Simplify the references.
Acked-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Acked-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
When --rebase-merges was first introduced, it only worked with the
`recursive` strategy. Some time later, it gained support for merges
using the `octopus` strategy. The limitation of only supporting these
two strategies was documented in 25cff9f109 ("rebase -i --rebase-merges:
add a section to the man page", 2018-04-25) and lifted in e145d99347
("rebase -r: support merge strategies other than `recursive`",
2019-07-31). However, when the limitation was lifted, the documentation
was not updated. Update it now.
Acked-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Acked-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git rebase --[no-]reschedule-failed-exec" did not work well with
its configuration variable, which has been corrected.
* ab/rebase-no-reschedule-failed-exec:
rebase: don't override --no-reschedule-failed-exec with config
rebase tests: camel-case rebase.rescheduleFailedExec consistently
Re-order the sections of a few manual pages to be consistent with the
entirety of the rest of our documentation. This allows us to remove
the just-added whitelist of "bad" order from
lint-man-section-order.perl.
I'm doing that this way around so that code will be easy to dig up if
we'll need it in the future. I've intentionally not added some other
sections such as EXAMPLES to the list of known sections.
If we were to add that we'd find some out of order. Perhaps we'll want
to order those consistently as well in the future, at which point
whitelisting some of them might become handy again.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Fix a bug in how --no-reschedule-failed-exec interacts with
rebase.rescheduleFailedExec=true being set in the config. Before this
change the --no-reschedule-failed-exec config option would be
overridden by the config.
This bug happened because of the particulars of how "rebase" works
v.s. most other git commands when it comes to parsing options and
config:
When we read the config and parse the CLI options we correctly prefer
the --no-reschedule-failed-exec option over
rebase.rescheduleFailedExec=true in the config. So far so good.
However the --reschedule-failed-exec option doesn't take effect when
the rebase starts (we'd just create a
".git/rebase-merge/reschedule-failed-exec" file if it was true). It
only takes effect when the exec command fails, at which point we'll
reschedule the failed "exec" command.
Since we only wrote out the positive
".git/rebase-merge/reschedule-failed-exec" under
--reschedule-failed-exec, but nothing with --no-reschedule-failed-exec
we'll forget that we asked not to reschedule failed "exec", and would
happily re-read the config and see that
rebase.rescheduleFailedExec=true is set.
So the config will effectively override the user having explicitly
disabled the option on the command-line.
Even more confusingly: Since rebase accepts different options based on
its state there wasn't even a way to get around this with "rebase
--continue --no-reschedule-failed-exec" (but you could of course set
the config with "rebase -c ...").
I think the least bad way out of this is to declare that for such
options and config whatever we decide at the beginning of the rebase
goes. So we'll now always create either a "reschedule-failed-exec" or
a "no-reschedule-failed-exec file at the start, not just the former if
we decided we wanted the feature.
With this new worldview you can no longer change the setting once a
rebase has started except by manually removing the state files
discussed above. I think making it work like that is the the least
confusing thing we can do.
In the future we might want to learn to change the setting in the
middle by combining "--edit-todo" with
"--[no-]reschedule-failed-exec", we currently don't support combining
those options, or any other way to change the state in the middle of
the rebase short of manually editing the files in
".git/rebase-merge/*".
The bug being fixed here originally came about because of a
combination of the behavior of the code added in d421afa0c6 (rebase:
introduce --reschedule-failed-exec, 2018-12-10) and the addition of
the config variable in 969de3ff0e (rebase: add a config option to
default to --reschedule-failed-exec, 2018-12-10).
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Mentored-by: Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org>
Mentored-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Helped-by: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Signed-off-by: Charvi Mendiratta <charvi077@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Ted reported an old typo in the git-commit.txt and merge-options.txt.
Namely, the phrase "Signed-off-by line" was used without either a
definite nor indefinite article.
Upon examination, it seems that the documentation (including items in
Documentation/, but also option help strings) have been quite
inconsistent on usage when referring to `Signed-off-by`.
First, very few places used a definite or indefinite article with the
phrase "Signed-off-by line", but that was the initial typo that led
to this investigation. So, normalize using either an indefinite or
definite article consistently.
The original phrasing, in Commit 3f971fc425 (Documentation updates,
2005-08-14), is "Add Signed-off-by line". Commit 6f855371a5 (Add
--signoff, --check, and long option-names. 2005-12-09) switched to
using "Add `Signed-off-by:` line", but didn't normalize the former
commit to match. Later commits seem to have cut and pasted from one
or the other, which is likely how the usage became so inconsistent.
Junio stated on the git mailing list in
<xmqqy2k1dfoh.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com> a preference to leave off
the colon. Thus, prefer `Signed-off-by` (with backticks) for the
documentation files and Signed-off-by (without backticks) for option
help strings.
Additionally, Junio argued that "trailer" is now the standard term to
refer to `Signed-off-by`, saying that "becomes plenty clear that we
are not talking about any random line in the log message". As such,
prefer "trailer" over "line" anywhere the former word fits.
However, leave alone those few places in documentation that use
Signed-off-by to refer to the process (rather than the specific
trailer), or in places where mail headers are generally discussed in
comparison with Signed-off-by.
Reported-by: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>
Acked-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>