Why you should use a terminal editor to write a commit message

Ever since starting to only use Git in the command line, I’ve been writing commit messages through a terminal editor (nano), instead of passing the message (-m) flag. Some colleagues find it odd that I do it this way, so here are seven reasons in favor of using a terminal editor:

1. First of all, you need to pass the -m flag, and that alone is costing you time.
2. You need to wrap your message in quotes/ticks (""). Finding them on your keyboard can be somewhat hard.
3. You can’t break lines in your message. Your brain is always under pressure to not click the enter key, otherwise, you will need to amend the commit message.
4. If the repository is configured with pre-commit hooks, they won’t be executed until you click the enter key. This is particularly bad if commit messages need to follow a specific structure.
5. Oh, you managed to click the enter key and accidentally created a commit? You need to repeat the whole process to amend the commit message (this includes copying/writing the message and passing the --amend flag).
6. Your terminal shell interpreter (bash/zsh/csh...) is very sensitive to special characters. To include them, you will need to think of ways to either escape them or make sure the interpreter won’t evaluate them. (e.g., imagine you need to write this message: fix: apply "$HOME" instead of using single ticks ('')))
7. Copy-pasting a message might give you a hard time. If the message includes Unicode characters that your terminal has issues to render, like emojis, it will be a pain to correct them.

All of these issues can be avoided if you learn the basics of a terminal editor (nano is really simple!) and type git commit (or even better, declare a shorthand alias like gc that will save you a ton of time).