how do I make the default git commit message use CRLF line endings

Question

The default git commit message includes the following:

# Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.
# On branch testNotepad
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   new file:   foo.txt

I have notepad setup as my default editor in git. This message is displayed as a single line due to the fact that line endings are not CRLF. I would like to change this. How can this be done?

Answer 1

git does not support this directly. You will need to use an editor that can handle Unix-style line endings ( \\n ).

However, if your editor of choice does not support this, you can instead set your editor to a proxy that will convert the line endings to Windows-style ( \\r\\n ), invoke your editor, then convert the line endings to Unix-style ( \\n ) for git.

GitPad is the best example of an editor proxy that can accomplish this.

Answer 2

This feature to support notepad may have been added since this question was asked. I was able to repro using version 2.16.1.windows.4.

Opens notepad with no line returns showing:

git config --global core.editor "notepad.exe"

However using this instead worked for me:

git config --global core.editor "notepad"

Just a matter of leaving the .exe off of the end.

Answer 3

Have you tried setting core.autocrlf to true ?

Something like:

git config --global core.autocrlf true