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From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, Gunnar Wagner <gunnar.wagner@irisgermanica.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] commit: reword --author error message
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 09:31:21 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20150115143120.GA16736@peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <84cf10a22858275d6e213311c93df7f6a5408f60.1421331608.git.git@drmicha.warpmail.net>

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 03:23:08PM +0100, Michael J Gruber wrote:

> If an --author argument is specified but does not contain a '>' then git tries
> to find the argument within the exiting authors; and gives the error
> message "No existing author found with '%s'" if there is no match.
> 
> This is confusing for users who try to specify a valid complete author
> name.
> 
> 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"

I really like the intent of this patch, but I actually find the new
message even more confusing.

Is this a time when we could use hint() to give a multi-line explanation
(and probably a matching advice.* config)? Like:

  hint: If the --author parameter contains angle brackets ("<>"), it
  hint: is treated as a literal name/email pair to use. If not, then
  hint: the history is searched for an existing matching author.

or something?

-Peff

  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-01-15 14:31 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-01-13  8:15 commit --amend --author error Gunnar Wagner
2015-01-13 11:24 ` Michael J Gruber
2015-01-14 12:09   ` Jeff King
2015-01-15 14:21     ` Michael J Gruber
2015-01-15 14:23       ` [PATCH] commit: reword --author error message Michael J Gruber
2015-01-15 14:25         ` Michael J Gruber
2015-01-15 14:31         ` Jeff King [this message]
2015-01-15 14:40           ` Michael J Gruber
2015-01-15 17:48         ` Junio C Hamano
2015-01-16  9:32           ` Jeff King
2015-01-16 17:29             ` Junio C Hamano
2015-01-16 18:33               ` Philip Oakley
2015-01-16 18:35                 ` Junio C Hamano
2015-01-16 19:37                   ` Eric Sunshine
2015-01-16 19:53                     ` Junio C Hamano
2015-01-26 15:48                       ` [PATCHv2] " Michael J Gruber
2015-01-26 19:07                         ` Jeff King
2015-01-27  2:43                           ` Junio C Hamano
2015-01-27  2:45                             ` Jeff King
2015-01-27  8:37                               ` Philip Oakley
2015-01-27 12:22                           ` Ramsay Jones

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