diff --git a/msgfmt b/msgfmt
index 9937e01..9f1c07a 100755
--- a/msgfmt
+++ b/msgfmt
@@ -42,7 +42,25 @@ done
 
 
 # format the commit message, stopping at the diff (if any)
-awk '/^diff --git/ { exit } { print }' \
+awk -vurl_root="$url_root" '
+    # replace commit refs with generated URL (allows linking to prior commits
+    # without hard-coding the configurable links that could change or be
+    # relative to where the content is hosted); this will then be processed as a
+    # normal URL by the remainder of the script
+    match($0, /\[cref:(.*?)\]/, g) {
+      # retrieve the URL from the hashcache and perform the line replacement
+      # (which will be reflected once we print the line)
+      c = "./hashcache " g[1]
+      c | getline result
+      gsub(/\[cref:.*?\]/, url_root result)
+    }
+
+    # stop printing at diff
+    /^diff --git/ { exit }
+
+    # otherwise, print everything
+    { print }
+  ' \
   | sed ':a;N;$!ba;
     # handle <>-delimited links (strip delimiters)
     s#<\([fh]ttps\?://[^ ]\+\)>#\1#g;
diff --git a/repo2html b/repo2html
index 7d64bc4..a70989d 100755
--- a/repo2html
+++ b/repo2html
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ license="${license:-$( cwarn license )}"
 msgfmt="${msgfmt:-./msgfmt}"
 
 # make configuration available to all scripts
-export title desc copyright license msgfmt
+export title desc copyright license msgfmt url_root
 
 # pass commit list to the HTML and RSS processors
 "$repotype"/list | tee \