Add character countdown to commit message input

[jayjun]

See #21144.

I miss warnings against long commit messages. I like Atom’s way of showing a persistent character countdown. It’s subtle and easy to ignore.

Knocked something up quickly using InputBox’s built-in validation box.

Haven’t put much thought into the UI. Happy to hear more ideas!

[msftclas]

All CLA requirements met.

[scottclayton]

@jayjun

There is a setting in extensions/git/package.nls.json

"config.enableLongCommitWarning": "Whether long commit messages should be warned about",

I don't know how the settings work in VS Code presently, but you might be able to work with that setting about whether to display the box.

I would suggest adding an additional setting for the number to cut off rather than hardcoding 72… something like

"config.longCommitWarningThreshold": "The number representing the maximum limit for an acceptable commit message",

I don't have the build tools in front of me or anything yet.

As an aside: I try to keep all my commits to <= 50 characters, since I think that's what the cutoff used to be in VS Code before the feature was dropped this year :)

[jayjun]

@scottclayton The warning feature was dropped when Git moved into an extension. config.enableLongCommitWarning exists as a vestige in package.nls.json only (localisation file).

I would imagine commit message limits are universal across SCMs anyway, within organisations or projects at least and not limited to the Git extension.

As for settings, I can’t find an IConfigurationService nearby to access values. Any ideas?

[joaomoreno]

We used to have this when Git wasn't an extension. Now that it is, this behaviour needs to go into API.

Would you like to continue the work and expose SourceControlInputBox.warningLength: number | undefined?

[jayjun]

@joaomoreno Forgive my ignorance, still new to the codebase.

Is the API for exposing the setting from host to extension, extension to host, or both? As I argued above, I think users rarely need different length warnings for different SCM extensions.

[joaomoreno]

It's our extension API. It's not a user setting, it would be an API exposed to an extension. Git might use 80, while Perforce doesn't have a limit.

[jayjun]

@joaomoreno SourceControlInputBox.warningLength added.

I’ve hard-coded Git’s warning length for now because I’m unsure where it should go.

I would appreciate some guidance on localising strings as well. Do we have plural support?

[DuckyCrayfish]

Any update on this? It's been a month since there was any activity

[jayjun]

@DuckyCrayfish It already works perfectly, and I occasionally rebase onto master while waiting for feedback.

If you want to see this merged, 👍 the topmost comment to upvote! That’s how Microsoft ranks what goes into the next release.

[DuckyCrayfish]

@jayjun Oh, wonderful, I got thrown off by the CI failure. Thanks for getting back to me, I'll give this a thumbs up.

[joaomoreno]

Hi guys ✋ sorry for jumping in so late.

I've made a few changes:

• The warning length should be per line, not for the whole value
• There should be a way to control the behaviour, so I've introduced a scm.inputCounter setting with the following possible values: ['always', 'warn', 'none']. I've picked warn as the default: it only shows the counter once you are over the limit

Thanks! 🍻

[Rylon]

Hi @joaomoreno did the scm.inputCounter setting make it into a release? I'm trying to set it in VS Code 1.20.0, but it doesn't seem to be recognised

[joaomoreno]

@Rylon We had to change it to git.inputValidation at the last minute. Sorry for that! Let me know whether it works. 👍

[jlelong]

Unfortunately, the configuration variable git.inputValidation is not documented on the release notes of 1.20. Moreover, the screenshot corresponds to git.inputValidation="always" whereas the default value is git.inputValidation="warn".

[joaomoreno]

@jlelong Great catch! I've updated the setting name and described the screenshot's behaviour: microsoft/vscode-docs#1387 Thanks! 🍻

[borekb]

I've also been struggling with this a bit, I was searching for "commit" and "length" in settings which didn't find anything because of this:

  // Controls when to show input validation.
  "git.inputValidation": "warn"

Maybe the comment could include a couple of useful keywords 😉

[joaomoreno]

@borekb 38ab734 👍

[robsonsobral]

Please, @joaomoreno , any way to customize the characters warning limit?

[Rylon]

Thanks @joaomoreno "git.inputValidation": "off" has sorted it for me 👍

[joaomoreno]

@robsonsobral Sure, would you like to submit a PR?

[borekb]

any way to customize the characters warning limit?

There's an issue specifically for that: #18807.

[robsonsobral]

@joaomoreno , I'm not sure on how to proceed, but I gonna try.

[poke]

I really like that this feature has made it in but I would like it to actually follow the very common pattern of having a 50 character summary line, and then an empty line before allowing a 72 character body.

It would be really nice if that would work somehow or could be configured in a way, although I’m not sure if that would not conflict with that API setting mentioned above since that only applies globally, and would not allow for line-based validation.

[GabeDuarteM]

@poke I would definitely prefer the way you described to work to be implemented, but maybe doing what was described at #18807 (comment) could be a simpler solution, as it would attend all public.

It would be nicer though if you could add three settings to what we already have today, those being headerLength, bodyLength and footerLength (or some other name), that would validate the length of the header, body, and the footer of the commit, and if it is not compliant, show the warn that is implemented today