From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:18:18 +0000 (+0200) Subject: doc: interpret-trailers: explain the format after the intro X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=ade06dca04833b87f64d163b8c41cd382352f43e;p=thirdparty%2Fgit.git doc: interpret-trailers: explain the format after the intro You need to read the entire “Description” section in order to understand the full trailer format. But there are many nuances, so that’s fine. As a starter though we have an introductory example.[1] That turns out to be crucial; the rest of this section talks about the mechanics of the command and only incidentally the format itself. Now, although the example might arguably be self-explanatory, we can add a little preamble which defines the format in its simplest form as well as define the most important terms. Note that we name the “blank line” rule since I want to use that term every time it comes up. It gets very mildly obfuscated if you call it a “blank line” in one place[2] and “empty (or whitespace-only) ...” in another one.[3] We will define the format of the *key* in the next commit. † 1: from d57fa7fc (doc: trailer: add more examples in DESCRIPTION, 2023-06-15) † 2: `Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc:86` in 5361983c (The 22nd batch, 2026-03-27) † 3: `Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc:93` in 5361983c (The 22nd batch, 2026-03-27) Suggested-by: D. Ben Knoble Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- diff --git a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc index ab3627c2cb..109059f11e 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc +++ b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc @@ -16,7 +16,12 @@ DESCRIPTION ----------- Add or parse trailer metadata at the end of the otherwise free-form part of a commit message, or any other kind of text. -For example, in the following commit message + +A _trailer_ in its simplest form is a key-value pair with a colon as a +separator. A _trailer block_ consists of one or more trailers. The +trailer block needs to be preceded by a blank line, where a _blank line_ +is either an empty or a whitespace-only line. For example, in the +following commit message ------------------------------------------------ subject