From: Alex Riesen <raa.lkml@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:40:33 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] describe: when failing, tell the user about options that work
Message-ID: <81b0412b0910220940n78ddb774i30338147327b198a@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <f1e86b9095d63c6541d0a8df6a1cf8eadfe247bb.1256226187.git.trast@student.ethz.ch>

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 17:44, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:
> @@ -259,7 +260,14 @@ static void describe(const char *arg, int last_one)
>                        printf("%s\n", find_unique_abbrev(sha1, abbrev));
>                        return;
>                }
> -               die("cannot describe '%s'", sha1_to_hex(sha1));
> +               if (unannotated_cnt)
> +                       die("cannot describe '%s'"
> +                           " with only\nannotated tags. Try --tags.",
> +                           sha1_to_hex(sha1));
> +               else
> +                       die("cannot describe '%s'"
> +                           " with tags\nTry --always, or create some tags.",
> +                           sha1_to_hex(sha1));

These are quite verbose. Could they be conditional on something like
advice.describeHints?