bug#68691: 30.0.50; [WISHLIST] Make it easier to conform to desired commit message format

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>,  iarchivedmywholelife@gmail.com,
>   68691@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2024 15:26:18 +0800
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > The script which generates ChangeLog files from Git logs is not
> > maintained by us, so this suggestion should go to the Gnulib folks, I
> > think.  If they succeed in generating the files and variables touched
> > by a given change mechanically, we can modify our conventions to ask
> > contributors to provide only the part that explains the change, its
> > rationale and important aspects, something that a program cannot
> > produce.
> 
> How is this different from expecting them to type C-c C-w in a vc-log
> buffer, and inserting this information?

It's one thing less to do.

> BTW, I wasn't proposing a commit hook that verifies the _contents_ of
> each commit message, only one that verifies the format of the messages.

It cannot.  Format could be okay, but will not describe all of the
changes, or describe them in a nonsensical way.

OTOH, is the format below OK or not?

     Merge from origin/emacs-29

     53481cc9546 Fix description of when "\xNNN" is considered a unibyte 
character
     1ef8b90ae06 Simplify imenu setup for {cmake,dockerfile}-ts-modes
     7338af9c986 ; * etc/PROBLEMS: Document that GnuPG 2.4.4 solves the EasyPG
     5483a1df99c Improve documentation of profiler commands
     fb4cf0ab46d ; Fix xref under Output Overrides in Elisp manual.
     aa6c24da61f Fix broken links to Freedesktop notifications spec
     14d68221d26 Fix nasty cut'n'waste error in Tramp
     51ca049608c Fix image-dired-tags-db-file void variable error
     c450eec07ff typescript-ts-mode: Skip test if tsx grammar missing
     9841ced147f ; Fix typos
     557ed9c0463 * admin/README: Document the run-codespell script.
     5701f96335c * admin/README: Fix entry on coccinelle subdirectory.
     1805f4bfd62 Add script admin/run-codespell and supporting files

Or this one:

    Revert "Fix typo in lispref 'Creating Strings' section"

    This reverts commit b825962ea840348bbde0c834ca398458a06fbb8b
    which was mistakenly installed in master instead of emacs-29.

Or this one:

    ; Update copyright years in more files

How do you distinguish between the above perfectly valid examples, and
some arbitrary text in a log message (which should be flagged as
nonconforming)?