breaking-changes: deprecate support for core.commentString=auto

When "core.commentString" is set to "auto" then "git commit" will
automatically select the comment character ensuring that it is not the
first character on any of the lines in the commit message. This was
introduced by commit 84c9dc2c5a2 (commit: allow core.commentChar=auto
for character auto selection, 2014-05-17). The motivation seems to be
to avoid commenting out lines from the existing message when amending
a commit that was created with a message from a file.

Unfortunately this feature does not work with:

 * commit message templates that contain comments.

 * prepare-commit-msg hooks that introduce comments.

 * "git commit --cleanup=strip --edit -F <file>" which means that it
   is incompatible with

   - the "fixup" and "squash" commands of "git rebase -i" as the
     comments added by those commands are then treated as part of
     the commit message.

   - the conflict comments added to the commit message by "git
     cherry-pick", "git rebase" etc. as these comments are then
     treated as part of the commit message.

It is also ignored by "git notes" when amending a note.

The issues with comments coming from a template, hook or file are a
consequence of the design of this feature and are therefore hard to
fix.

As the costs of this feature outweigh the benefits, deprecate it and
remove it in Git 3.0. If someone comes up with some patches that fix
all the issues in a maintainable way then I'd be happy to see this
change reverted.

The next commits will add a warning and some advice for users on how
they can update their config settings.

Signed-off-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

3 files changed, 4 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/t/t3404-rebase-interactive.sh b/t/t3404-rebase-interactive.sh
index 6bac217ed3..ce0aebb9a7 100755
--- a/t/t3404-rebase-interactive.sh
+++ b/t/t3404-rebase-interactive.sh
@@ -1176,7 +1176,7 @@ test_expect_success 'rebase -i respects core.commentchar' '
 	test B = $(git cat-file commit HEAD^ | sed -ne \$p)
 '
 
-test_expect_success 'rebase -i respects core.commentchar=auto' '
+test_expect_success !WITH_BREAKING_CHANGES 'rebase -i respects core.commentchar=auto' '
 	test_config core.commentchar auto &&
 	write_script copy-edit-script.sh <<-\EOF &&
 	cp "$1" edit-script
diff --git a/t/t3418-rebase-continue.sh b/t/t3418-rebase-continue.sh
index b8a8dd77e7..f9b8999db5 100755
--- a/t/t3418-rebase-continue.sh
+++ b/t/t3418-rebase-continue.sh
@@ -328,7 +328,7 @@ test_expect_success 'there is no --no-reschedule-failed-exec in an ongoing rebas
 	test_expect_code 129 git rebase --edit-todo --no-reschedule-failed-exec
 '
 
-test_expect_success 'no change in comment character due to conflicts markers with core.commentChar=auto' '
+test_expect_success !WITH_BREAKING_CHANGES 'no change in comment character due to conflicts markers with core.commentChar=auto' '
 	git checkout -b branch-a &&
 	test_commit A F1 &&
 	git checkout -b branch-b HEAD^ &&
diff --git a/t/t7502-commit-porcelain.sh b/t/t7502-commit-porcelain.sh
index b37e2018a7..65b4519a71 100755
--- a/t/t7502-commit-porcelain.sh
+++ b/t/t7502-commit-porcelain.sh
@@ -956,13 +956,13 @@ test_expect_success 'commit --status with custom comment character' '
 	test_grep "^; Changes to be committed:" .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 '
 
-test_expect_success 'switch core.commentchar' '
+test_expect_success !WITH_BREAKING_CHANGES 'switch core.commentchar' '
 	test_commit "#foo" foo &&
 	GIT_EDITOR=.git/FAKE_EDITOR git -c core.commentChar=auto commit --amend &&
 	test_grep "^; Changes to be committed:" .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 '
 
-test_expect_success 'switch core.commentchar but out of options' '
+test_expect_success !WITH_BREAKING_CHANGES 'switch core.commentchar but out of options' '
 	cat >text <<\EOF &&
 # 1
 ; 2