From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 17:29:15 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] commit: reword --author error message
Message-ID: <xmqqwq4m3a8k.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20150116093220.GA3006@peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> 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.

Indeed it is clunky and not in the usual format.

This might be better, perhaps?

    die(_("--author '%s': not 'Name <email>' and matches no existing author"));