From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 09:32:21 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] commit: reword --author error message
Message-ID: <20150116093220.GA3006@peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq4mrs7x5h.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 09:48:26AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> > 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"
> 
> You are trying to help a user who thought "Who www.where.com" was a
> valid thing to pass to --author; "it is not completely wellformed"
> is not very helpful without making her realize what in that bogus
> string is not "completely well-formed".
> 
> Perhaps
> 
>   "--author '%s' is not 'Name <email>' and no existing author matches that string"
> 
> or somesuch?

Yeah, I think that is OK. It is kind of clunky to read, but it contains
all of the necessary information to lead the user in the right
direction.

-Peff