Question pretty much says it all. I suppose more specifically, is this a "standards" warning? Is it trying to tell me not to do a multi-line commit message, or perhaps if I want to do a multi-line commit message it needs to start with a new-line? Just confused/curious. It could be a bug, too.

P.S. My editor is vim.

without new linewith new line


The "warning" comes from some best practices, so nothing will break but people have seen it is usually works better this way:

From the Pro Git book


So you should have:

  • an initial 50 char line
  • a blank line
  • A longer description

vim is warning you about the missing blank line

From the text in the screenshot, it looks like you have the long description, but you also need to add a summary (initial line)


Yes, this is because you are supposed to have the first line as subject line (max. 50 characters), then either nothing or an empty line plus a more detailed explanation (max. 72 characters width) below. So the second line should always be empty.

Nothing will really break if you don't do this, but some things assume this format, for example the first line might be used as subject for emails, it's displayed in the oneline log, etc.

See also: https://git-scm.com/book/ch5-2.html

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