Add a hash/pound symbol as the first character in a git commit message in vim

Question

GitHub (probably, wrongly) uses #\'s when referring to GitHub issues. So I would like to add a commit message that refers to the issue on the first line.

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Answer 1

Git allows you to update the comment char from the # symbol to any other. Then you can use the # symbol.

e.g.

git config core.commentChar '>'

or optionally set it globally

git config --global core.commentchar '>'

Answer 2

The simplest way to avoid git interpreting the issue number as a comment line, is to insert another character before, so the # is not the leading character of the line (a space will do the trick).

Here is an example:

#45

will be seen as a comment

 #45
Issue #45

will both be taken entirely as commit messages