FR: Ability to customize message generated by jj backout

[zx8]

Personally, I prefer to use "revert" in my commit messages as I'm used to it from git, and my colleagues (non-jj users) have become used to scanning for the word "Revert XYZ" in git's log output.

Is it possible to make this configurable? i.e. so a jj backout commit is indistinguishable from a git revert, without having to manually rewrite the commit message/description each time.

[yuja]

We'll need per-command description template similar to templates.draft_commit_description and ui.default-description.

[bnjmnt4n]

I had #3583 before, which did something similar (but added a --template argument as well). Maybe I should reopen it?

[yuja]

I personally don't think we'll need backout --template (or backout --message-template=<TEMPLATE>) option, but some configured description template will be useful. I think ui.default-description can be replaced with that.

[emilazy]

Does anyone strongly prefer "back out"? Our current template is identical to Git's except that Git says "revert". I find "back out" somewhat awkward and not more accurate, so I would prefer we adjust the default template and rename the command.

[emilazy]

@martinvonz said in #5397 (comment):

revert is confusing for hg users (hg revert is jj restore). We could still use that, or we could use reverse. Another option is rollback (or roll-back to be more grammatically correct).

Personally I think a little confusion for Mercurial users an acceptable cost for what I think is the better name (we confuse Git users a fair bit already!). I don’t mind reverse either, but I think it’s more ambiguous (maybe it could reverse commit ordering?) and the Git terminology is good enough that we can just reuse it.

(Anyway, maybe we should discuss this in a separate issue or something.)

[zx8]

@emilazy #5688