Since this is describing the commit and what was done and why, the commit seems like a better place.
In tools like GitHub, if you make a PR with this commit, it will also automatically put the text in the PR description.
I would much prefer this at work over what I usually see with inconsistent commit message styles and not explaining properly what was done, and not following the recommended max length per line.
but "why" includes lots of detail about the steps they went through. Why can't "there was utf-8/non-ascii whitespace in the file" Cover all of that? Why detail all the steps to reproduce?
In tools like GitHub, if you make a PR with this commit, it will also automatically put the text in the PR description.
I would much prefer this at work over what I usually see with inconsistent commit message styles and not explaining properly what was done, and not following the recommended max length per line.