Aborting commit due to empty commit message

Question

As a newbie git user, when I try to commit my work with

git commit -a -v

and I enter a commit message in my editor, I close the file, and g

Answer 1

When you set an editor in the configuration of Git, make sure to pass the parameter "-w" to force Git to wait your commit message that you would type on your custom editor.

git config --global core.editor "[your editor] -w"

Answer 2

This error can happen if your commit comment is a single line starting with a # character. For example, I got this error when I ended up with the following in my commit message text editor window:

#122143980 - My commit message was here. The number to the left is a Pivotal Tracker story/ticket number that I was attempting to reference in the commit message.
# Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.
# On branch [MYBRANCH]
# Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/[MYBRANCH]'.
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   modified:   [MYFILE1]
#   modified:   [MYFILE2]
#

The problem, of course, is that my commit message started with a # character, so git saw that line as a comment, and consequently saw the commit message as being empty, as it had nothing but comments!

The fix was to start my commit message with a character other than #.

In my specific case, enclosing the Pivotal ID in square brackets made both git and Pivotal happy:

[#122143980] My commit message here. 

Answer 3

First remove old entries of editors:

git config --global --unset-all core.editor
git config  --unset-all core.editor

Set your editor:

• For Notepad++

  git config --global core.editor "Notepad++ -w"
  git config core.editor "Notepad++ -w"
  

• For sublime

  git config --global core.editor "Notepad++ -w"
  git config core.editor "subl -w"
  

Answer 4

I have configured my atom editor as

git config --global core.editor "atom --wait"

but when I did

git commit

when atom was already launched, it opened a new tab for adding comments, but git wasn't waiting for me to save file and throwed "Aborting" message instantly. When I closed atom and tried to commit one more time, git launched atom and waited for comments to be added.

Answer 5

On windows machine for 'Sublime' editor we can also add the following line in .gitconfig file in the following folder [YOUR DRIVE LETTER]:/users/username/

[core]
  editor = '[YOUR DRIVE LETTER]:/Program Files/Sublime Text [YOUR VERSION NUMBER]/sublime_text.exe' --wait

Hope it helps.

Answer 6

To begin with, make sure your git is correctly configured to open some kind of editor prompt (visual studio / sublime / notepad++ / atom etc) in order to proceed further.

• For my case I configured my git to use visual studio in Ubuntu environment.
• I tried committing a change, it failed with given failure.
• Then I looked at my .gitconfig file and found out my editor was missing -w parameter
• I ran git config --global core.editor "code -w" command and rechecked my .gitconfig file, noticed the -w was added there correctly.
• Tried committing the change again and it worked for me.

Hope this helps for some other newbie's like myself.