From ade06dca04833b87f64d163b8c41cd382352f43e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2026 11:18:18 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] doc: interpret-trailers: explain the format after the intro MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 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 --- Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc | 7 ++++++- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) 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 -- 2.47.3