Is there a way to reuse the previous comment on a git commit?

Question

Occasionally I will drop into troubleshooting mode and commit/push a number of small but separate commits with a comment like, "Troubleshooting the <something> during deployment to Heroku." I would like to use the same comment for each commit without having to retype it. Is this possible?

Answer 1

From the git-commit(1) command documentation,

-C <commit> --reuse-message=<commit> Take an existing commit object, and reuse the log message and the authorship  information (including the timestamp) when creating the commit.  -c <commit> --reedit-message=<commit> Like -C, but with -c the editor is invoked, so that the user can further edit  the commit message. 

It's then possible using,

  git commit --reuse-message=HEAD 

Update:

You may also need to use the --reset-author option,

--reset-author When used with -C/-c/--amend options, declare that the authorship of the  resulting commit now belongs of the committer. This also renews the author  timestamp. 

Answer 2

At first, I answered:

I guess git commit --reuse-message=HEAD does it

Then I thought that's not what you wanted and deleted it. Then life caught up and got AFK for a couple of hours. Anyways, despite an answer having already been accepted, I would have suggested:

$ git config alias.troubleshoot '!troubleshoot() { git add -u && git commit -m "Troubleshooting the $1 during deployment to Heroku."; }; troubleshoot' 

And you use it the following way:

1. modify existing files
2. (eventually add untracked files)
3. git troubleshoot foo

Would commit changes (and eventually new files) with "Troubleshooting the foo during deployment to Heroku." as commit message.