Guidlines for error messages

[Kaartic Sivaraam <kaarticsivaraam91196@gmail.com>]

Hello all,

On reading the CodingGuidelines, I saw a section that specifies rules
about the structure and formatting of error messages. I have reproduced
it below,


    Error Messages

     - Do not end error messages with a full stop.

     - Do not capitalize ("unable to open %s", not "Unable to open %s")

     - Say what the error is first ("cannot open %s", not "%s: cannot open")


Having used git all these days, I have seen error messages that do seem
to be violating the above guidelines (at least the first 2 points). A
few are,


    Aborting commit due to empty commit message.


    fatal: There is no merge to abort (MERGE_HEAD missing).


    fatal: You have not concluded your merge (MERGE_HEAD exists).
    Please, commit your changes before you merge.


    error: Empty commit message.
    Not committing merge; use 'git commit' to complete the merge.


    error: pathspec 'hell' did not match any file(s) known to git.


    fatal: Not a valid object name foo


    fatal: ambiguous argument 'foo..bar': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
    Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
    'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'


A few that do seem to be following the guideline are

    fatal: could not read log file 'imaginary_file': No such file or directory

    fatal: no input file given for in-place editing



    That makes me wonder, has the guideline changed ?
    Is this something that must be fixed ?
    Am I missing something ?

    -- 
    Kaartic