as of git-annex version 3.20110719, all git-annex commits only contain the word "update" as a commit message. given that the contents of the commit are pretty non-descriptive (SHA1 hashes for file names, uuids for repository names), i suggest to have more descriptive commit messages, as shown here:

    /mnt/usb_disk/photos/2011$ git annex get
    /mnt/usb_disk/photos/2011$ git show git-annex
    [...]
    usb-disk-photos: get 2011
    
    * 10 files retrieved from 2 sources (9 from local-harddisk, 1 from my-server)
    * 120 files were already present
    * 2 files could not be retrieved
    /mnt/usb_disk/photos/2011$ cd ~/photos/2011/07
    ~/photos/2011/07$ git copy --to my-server
    ~/photos/2011/07$ git show git-annex
    [...]
    local-harddisk: copy 2011/07 to my-server
    
    * 20 files pushed
    ~/photos/2011/07$

in my opinion, the messages should at least contain

* what command was used
* in which repository they were executed
* which files or directories they affected (not necessarily all files, but what was given on command line or implicitly from the working directory)

--[[chrysn]]

> The implementation of the git-annex branch precludes more descriptive
> commit messages, since a single commit can include changes that were
> previously staged to the branch's index file, or spooled to its journal
> by other git-annex commands (either concurrently running or
> interrupted commands, or even changes needed to automatically merge
> other git-annex branches).
> 
> It would be possible to make it *less* verbose, with an empty commit
> message. :) --[[Joey]] 

>> Closing as this is literally impossible to do without making
>> git-annex worse. [[done]] --[[Joey]] 

> I'm not sure that the requested feature is that far off. There are two
> aspects, that can be solved relatively easy:
>
>  * Recording the name of the remote the commit was issued on. This
>    information is simply constant per remote.
>
>  * While it is true that there is no 1 on 1 correspondence between commands
>    and git-annex commits, it would be entirely possible to add a "message
>    journal". Every command issued would start out with writing its
>    invocation to the message journal. At the time the journal ends up being
>    committed to the git-annex branch, the message journal is used as the
>    body of the commit message and truncated.
>
> It is true that these suggestions do not address every aspect of the
> original report, but they would solve about 90%. --[[HelmutGrohne]]