Editing git commit template

Find and Edit git Commit Template

Git allows to define your commit template. The template file name is defined in your git config file.

git config --list

The default value is as follows:

commit.template=/Users//.stCommitMsg

I find it convenient to have certain values already added to the file. For example I am adding the current sprint number as well as the issue number to the commit.

This means that I usually edit the file once every sprint or sometimes if I want to per-populate the current issue number even more often.

To open the git commit template with one line without knowing the exact file name I put the following one-liner in my ~/.bashrc file

alias git-edit-commit-template="vim $(git config --list | grep commit.template | cut -d= --output-delimiter=$' ' -f1- | cut -d' ' -f2)"

As it turns out, there is an easier way to extract the value with using a git build-in command:

git config commit.template