Re: [PATCH] commit: reword --author error message

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 15, 2015, 14:31 UTC
Message-ID: <20150115143120.GA16736@peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <84cf10a22858275d6e213311c93df7f6a5408f60.1421331608.git.git@drmicha.warpmail.net>

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 03:23:08PM +0100, Michael J Gruber wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> If an --author argument is specified but does not contain a '>' then git tries
> to find the argument within the exiting authors; and gives the error
> message "No existing author found with '%s'" if there is no match.
> 
> This is confusing for users who try to specify a valid complete author
> name.
> 
> Rename the error message to make it clearer that the failure has two
> reasons in this case:
> "Bad --author parameter '%s': neither completely wellformed nor part of
> an existing one"

I really like the intent of this patch, but I actually find the new message even more confusing.

Is this a time when we could use hint() to give a multi-line explanation (and probably a matching advice.* config)? Like:

  hint: If the --author parameter contains angle brackets ("<>"), it
  hint: is treated as a literal name/email pair to use. If not, then
  hint: the history is searched for an existing matching author.

or something?

-Peff