Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] Capitalization and punctuation fixes to some user visible messages

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2023 13:39:28 -0700

Oswald Buddenhagen <[email-masked]> writes:

>  			require_clean_work_tree(the_repository,
>  				N_("pull with rebase"),
> -				_("please commit or stash them."), 1, 0);
> +				_("Please commit or stash them."), 1, 0);

The require_clean_work_tree() function uses the message this patch
touches here like so:

	...
	if (err) {
		if (hint)
			error("%s", hint);
		if (!gently)
			exit(128);
	}

and the message given to error() is shown with "error: " prefix.
Our friendly CodingGuidelines is fairly clear on what to do to a
single sentence error message like this one:

| Error Messages
| 
|  - Do not end error messages with a full stop.
| 
|  - Do not capitalize the first word, only because it is the first word
|    in the message ("unable to open %s", not "Unable to open %s").  But
|    "SHA-3 not supported" is fine, because the reason the first word is
|    capitalized is not because it is at the beginning of the sentence,
|    but because the word would be spelled in capital letters even when
|    it appeared in the middle of the sentence.

So, if you want to touch this message, what you want to do is to
leave the capitalization alone, but to drop the full stop at the
end.

> diff --git a/sequencer.c b/sequencer.c
> index 3be23d7ca2..fda68cd33d 100644
> --- a/sequencer.c
> +++ b/sequencer.c
> @@ -3629,13 +3629,13 @@ static int do_exec(struct repository *r, const char *command_line)
>  			  "\n"),
>  			command_line,
>  			dirty ? N_("and made changes to the index and/or the "
> -				"working tree\n") : "");
> +				"working tree.\n") : "");

I think this long and multi-sentence warning message should be split
into two and the latter half should become an advice message that
the user can squelch.  Until it happens, which would require us to
rewrite these messages, I wouldn't bother touching this message if I
were you.

>  	} else if (dirty) {
>  		warning(_("execution succeeded: %s\nbut "
> -			  "left changes to the index and/or the working tree\n"
> +			  "left changes to the index and/or the working tree.\n"
>  			  "Commit or stash your changes, and then run\n"
>  			  "\n"
>  			  "  git rebase --continue\n"

Likewise.