What steps will reproduce the problem? Use git-annex and add file to repo. What is the expected output? What do you see instead? File is committed and added to annex. Instead a command like this is run "git --git-dir=/home/jchu/annex/.git --work-tree=/home/jchu/annex commit --allow-empty-message -m --quiet" and for some reason git decides to open a COMMIT_EDITMSG file in my editor of choice "vim .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG". Since git annex doesn't give me access to the terminal, I don't see it. Depending on when it happens, the web interface could refuse to start (if the commit hang happens on startup) or if it happens during regular operation, then everything looks fine but the web interface doesn't update after that. What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system? git-annex (binary release) 4.20130405 git 1.8.2.1 On Arch Linux. Please provide any additional information below. I'm not sure if the git interface has changed, but I do see that --allow-empty-message does still exist. If I run the git commit command (with a '' after the -m), it does indeed start up vim for me. Would we benefit from just making a custom commit message ("Commit from date YYYYMMDDTHHMMSSZ")? > [[fixed|done]] --[[Joey]]