Aborting commit due to empty commit message

Question

As a newbie git user, when I try to commit my work with

git commit -a -v

and I enter a commit message in my editor, I close the file, and g

Answer 1

This error can happen if your commit comment is a single line starting with a # character. For example, I got this error when I ended up with the following in my commit message text editor window:

#122143980 - My commit message was here. The number to the left is a Pivotal Tracker story/ticket number that I was attempting to reference in the commit message.
# Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.
# On branch [MYBRANCH]
# Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/[MYBRANCH]'.
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   modified:   [MYFILE1]
#   modified:   [MYFILE2]
#

The problem, of course, is that my commit message started with a # character, so git saw that line as a comment, and consequently saw the commit message as being empty, as it had nothing but comments!

The fix was to start my commit message with a character other than #.

In my specific case, enclosing the Pivotal ID in square brackets made both git and Pivotal happy:

[#122143980] My commit message here.