How to change default git commit message

Question

I've added some changes on commit message in prepare-commit-msg file and then I exec this command

git config --global commit.template .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg

After that when I do git commit I receive something like this

40 lines of my changes and then

# Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.   
# Explicit paths specified without -i nor -o; assuming --only paths... 
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#
#       modified:   test
#    

Question is there any chance to show this default message on the top? Or better permanently remove this message?

Answer 1

You seem to be mixing up the commit.template option (which provides a default value for the --template option to git commit) with the prepare-commit-message hook.

Normally git commit uses the following sequence of operations:

1. Run the pre-commit hook, if it exists and is runnable. If it exits non-zero, abort the commit.
2. Copy any specified or configured template (see below) to a temporary file. If there is no template or the template path is not readable, begin with an empty temporary file.
3. Add the lines # Please enter the commit message ... and the output of git status.
4. Run the prepare-commit-message hook, if it exists and is runnable, on the temporary file.
5. Open up your editor on the temporary file. (Your editor is set from $GIT_EDITOR, the core.editor configuration, $VISUAL, $EDITOR, or a built-in default, whichever is the first one set.)
6. Once you exit your editor, make the commit, or stop the commit, depending on whether you have provided a commit message.

If you use the -f or -m options, steps 2, 3, and 5 are normally skipped (though you can force git to open your editor by adding --edit). Presumably you have not used those options.

What the --template option does—and hence what commit.template does—is to provides the path name of a file that git commit will copy in step 2. This does not affect lines added in step 3. While the path .git/hooks/prepare-commit-message is (probably) a file git can read, it's not a very sensible name for your template, since if that same path is made executable, the file will become runnable and step 4 will probably behave badly.

You can tell git commit not to do step 3 by adding --no-status. (Also, as a somewhat odd side effect, --no-edit, which explicitly suppresses step 5, also suppresses step 3.)

Or, you can make use of step 4 to eliminate some or all of the git status output and standard # Please enter... message. The prepare-commit-message hook can make arbitrary changes to the template file.

Note that --cleanup=<mode> affects what winds up in the final commit message, and also the processing of step 6. For details see the git commit documentation.