Retrieving failed fugitive commit message

Question

I PGP sign my commit messages, and every once in a while GPG will fail for whatever reason (invalid cache, incorrect pin, etc), and my fugitive buffer will close, loosing all my changes.

It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's really frustrating because I like to write thorough commit messages.

My question is, does anyone have a suggestion of how to retrieve the message I wrote after the commit fails?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The contents of .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG usually persist, but there are ways to create backups.

One solution that comes to mind, leveraging the filetype gitcommit (untested):

" .vim/after/ftplugin/gitcommit.vim
" autocmd! prevents duplication if resourced
" |      BufWritePre triggered before write
" |      |           <buffer> applies only to this buffer
" |      |           |        write to '%.save' ('%' expands to current filename)
" |      |           |        |
autocmd! BufWritePre <buffer> write %.save

Then, if there was a failure, when you do git commit, simply type :0read %.save. You might even want to create a buffer-local mapping for this:

" .vim/after/ftplugin/gitcommit.vim

nnoremap <buffer> <silent> <LocalLeader>b 0read %.save<CR>

Make sure to adjust b:undo_ftplugin appropriately. You'll also need (at minimum) filetype plugin on.