Disable -m in git

Question

I am trying to train myself to write better commit messages, so I have created an entry in my ~/.gitconfig

[commit]
    template = ~/.gitmessage.txt

The conundrum is that I nearly always use:

git commit -m "Message here"

and sometimes:

git commit -am "Message here"

How can I prevent myself from using the -m flag, so that my template will be presented and I will be reminded to use it?

I don't need to absolutely enforce this in the project, but I would like to wean myself off of "-m".

Ubuntu/Bash is my environment.

Answer 1

Put this in your .bashrc:

git() {
  for arg
  do
    if [[ $arg == -m* || $arg == -[^-]*m* ]]
    then
      annoy_me
      return 1
    fi
  done
  command git "$@"
}
annoy_me() { 
  echo "Stop using -m, $USER!" 
  echo "You are now in time out."
  settings=$(stty -g)        
  stty raw
  sleep 15
  stty "$settings"
}

annoy_me here waits 15 seconds and is not killable from that terminal.

You can replace it by whatever you consider suitably annoying, such as sl or mplayer -volume 100 Spice_Girls_Wannabe.mp3 < /dev/null &> /dev/null &

Answer 2

You can write a shell script called git as well and put it into your PATH before the real git. Inside it, you just check the args for -m, if present scoff at yourself, if not call the real git binary.

See this question for an example how to forward the args.