How to specify a git commit message template for a repository in a file at a relative path to the repository?

Question

Is there a way to specify a git commit.template that is relative to a repository?

For configuration an example is

$ git config commit.template $HOME/         


        

Answer 1

I used the prepare-commit-msg hook to solve this.

First create a file .git/commit-msg with the template of the commit message like

$ cat .git/commit-msg
My Commit Template

Next create a file .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg with the contents

#!/bin/sh

firstLine=$(head -n1 $1)

if [ -z "$firstLine"  ] ;then
    commitTemplate=$(cat `git rev-parse --git-dir`/commit-msg)
    echo -e "$commitTemplate\n $(cat $1)" > $1
fi

Mark the newly-created file as executable:

chmod +x .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg

This sets the commit message to the contents of the template.