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Default message for merge commits documented (partially) incorrectly #38163

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@keikoro

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@keikoro

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What article on docs.github.com is affected?

Repositories/Branches and merges/Configure PR merges/Configure commit merging

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

The docs state:

The default message includes the pull request number and title. For example, Merge pull request #123 from patch-1. You can also choose to use just the pull request title, or the pull request title and description.

This doesn't seem to be true for merge commits created in organisation repos.

What I'm seeing in an org I belong to is the format:
Merge pull request #123 from ORGNAME/patch-1

Since there is no way to preview the default message from within a repo's settings, I couldn't tell if this odd formatting choice was due to an org-wide customisation/override created by an admin (potentially in error) or if this was the site-wide default. See also this community comment I left on an existing discussion re: default commit messages in Feb, expressing my confusion.

Well. I just thought to run a search for "merge pull request" on the github org. Looks like it's actually GitHub which drops the repo name from the ref in its global default?

I personally find this rather unfortunate because it's virtually indistinguishable from slash-separated refs. It also obfuscates the origins of a project – if I wanted to trace an old clone whose upstream is no longer available (and whose local name I couldn't necessarily rely on), I'd hope to find the actual project name in there somewhere, more so than the name of the publisher. If the intention is to "bake" the organization name into merge commits, the full ref hierarchy should be included rather than a version which omits the project name, i.e. ORGNAME/REPONAME/patch-1, for increased transparency.

Be that as it may, the docs should be updated to reflect the actual format(s) of the default message(s).

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