Subject: Re: [PATCH] commit: reword --author error message

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 09:31:21 -0500

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