git commit message conventions

[Paul Eggert]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> As far as I understand them, the GNU Coding Standards do not permit
> the information we want to associate with each commit in ChangeLog
> files.

That's not the case for many other GNU projects I deal with.  People put other 
information into the ChangeLog files, either before or after the 
canonical-format ChangeLog entries.  The Emacs CONTRIBUTE file, for example, 
gives the following suggested example for a commit message (indented):

	Deactivate shifted region

	Do not silently extend a region that is not highlighted;
	this can happen after a shift (Bug#19003).
	* doc/emacs/mark.texi (Shift Selection): Document the change.
	* lisp/window.el (handle-select-window):
	* src/frame.c (Fhandle_switch_frame, Fselected_frame):
	Deactivate the mark.

and only half the lines in this prototype are in traditional ChangeLog format.

In the projects I deal with that still have both commit messages and ChangeLog 
files, I regularly make the commit message equal the ChangeLog file entry, 
except I omit the indenting in the commit message and I omit the 2nd blank line 
in the ChangeLog.  This is not just my convention; it's what the vc-dwim command 
does automatically.  (And no, I didn't write vc-dwim. :-)  It's a reasonable 
convention, and it should be OK for glibc contributors to use it even if it's 
not required for glibc.