git-pull --tags with no merge candidates case gives confusing error message

Hi all,

Calling git-pull --tags, and hitting the no merge candidates case, currently gives the following error message:

    It doesn't make sense to pull all tags; you probably meant:
        git fetch --tags

This error message comes from the following code block in git-pull.sh:

    for opt
    do
        case "$opt" in
        -t|--t|--ta|--tag|--tags)
            echo "It doesn't make sense to pull all tags; you probably meant:"
            echo "  git fetch --tags"
            exit 1
        esac
    done

This behavior was introduced in 441ed41 ("git pull --tags": error out with a better message., 2007-12-28), which stated that:

    In the longer term, it would be a better approach to change the
    semantics of --tags option to make "git fetch" and "git pull"
    to:

     (1) behave as if no --tags was given (so an explicit refspec on
         the command line overrides configured ones, or no explicit
         refspecs on the command line takes configured ones); but

     (2) no auto-following of tags is made even when using
         configured refspecs; and

     (3) fetch all tags as not-for-merge entries".

    Then we would not need to have this separate error message, as
    the ordinary merge will happen even with the --tags option.

Given that as of c5a84e9 (fetch --tags: fetch tags *in addition to* other stuff, 2013-10-30), git-pull --tags will fetch tags in addition to the configured refspecs, so if there are no merge candidates, it would not be because --tags was specified on the command line.

As such, I wonder if the error message should be removed, since it conceals the actual reason of why there are no merge candidates. Unless there is a reason why this special error message was kept?

Thanks, Paul