Default description for squashed merge commits

[alecbz]

Right now when squashing a PR into a single commit to merge, the title defaults to the PR's title (👍), but the description defaults to a list of the descriptions of the commits in the PR.

A better default seems like it would be the PR's description, which would also be more consistent with using the PR's title for the commit's summary.

[mikeburke106]

Even better yet would be supporting a template like the Github template for issues and pull requests. You could create your own template for the title and the description of the squash merge.

[mvalkon]

I'm currently suffering from not having this. For certain compliancy reasons, I need to have the issue number in the commit message that is finally merged to master. I want fast-forward merges only, and prefer a git log in which all commits in master all pass the tests at the time the commit was merged.

Squash and merge allows this (and we can enforce it in repository settings), which is great, but there should be a default option of using the PR title & body as the resulting commit message. Developers sometimes work hard to create informative PR's, and this information is easily lost.

[alecbz]

Yeah, I try to be good about manually copy-pasting the PR description before committing the squash, but it's definitely tedious and would be great to not have to do.

[Xeverous]

but the description defaults to a list of the descriptions of the commits in the PR.

This has very little sense because most of post-review commits will be fixes to things mentioned during review. Why can't the person who submits the PR just edit the final commit message?

[dan-cooke]

@Xeverous

Why can't the person who submits the PR just edit the final commit message?

Because sometimes people are tired and just hit the big green button.

It would be nice if we could at least guide them into copying and pasting this message with a template.

Or better yet - the default message should be the PR description

[alecbz]

Yeah, you want to limit the amount of cognitive load to do common things like submitting PRs. Even a small amount of friction can be distracting and tiring. More realistically, people just won't do it.

[mgol]

They've changed something recently and now when I click Squash & Merge, the final commit description is empty - it picks up neither the commit description (even if there was only one commit in the PR) nor the PR description. This is really bad, it's so easy to lose valuable information when squashing.

Has anyone else noticed the change? I hope it's not just me.

[zachwhaley]

FWIW I wrote a browser extension to do this

https://github.com/zachwhaley/squashed-merge-message