# "git tag --contains <id>" is too chatty, if <id> is invalid

2 messages from 2016-01-18 to 2016-01-18. Participants: Toralf Förster, Jeff King.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/41213

## Toralf Förster, 2016-01-18 21:24

Subject: "git tag --contains <id>" is too chatty, if <id> is invalid
Message-ID: <569D580F.4070302@gmx.de>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/569D580F.4070302%40gmx.de

```
 very first line is "error: malformed object name <id>" which tells all, or ?

-- 
Toralf, pgp: C4EACDDE 0076E94E

```

## Jeff King, 2016-01-18 21:54

Subject: Re: "git tag --contains <id>" is too chatty, if <id> is invalid
Message-ID: <20160118215433.GB24136@sigill.intra.peff.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20160118215433.GB24136%40sigill.intra.peff.net
In-Reply-To: <569D580F.4070302@gmx.de>

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On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 10:24:31PM +0100, Toralf Förster wrote:

>  very first line is "error: malformed object name <id>" which tells all, or ?

Yeah, I agree that showing the "-h" help is a bit much.

This is a side effect of looking up in the commit in the parse-options
callback. It has to signal an error to the option parser, and then the
option parser always shows the help on an error.

I think we'd need to do one of:

  1. call die() in the option-parsing callback (this is probably a bad
     precedent, as the callbacks might be reused from a place that wants
     to behave differently)

  2. have the callback just store the argument string, and then resolve
     the commit later (and die or whatever if it doesn't exist). This
     pushes more work onto the caller, but in this case it's all done by
     the ref-filter code, so it could presumably happen during another
     part of the ref-filter setup.

  3. teach parse-options to accept some specific non-zero return code
     that means "return an error, but don't show the usage"

I think any one of those would be a good project for somebody looking to
get their feet wet in working on git. I think (2) is the cleanest.

-Peff

```