And again, sigh: >> const char git_usage_string[] = .... >> const char git_more_info_string[] = > It is not obvious to me where git_usage_string is looked up in the > message catalog. It is used that way in builtin/help.c ..
I wanted to be consistent with the current state of the file. This is the same way const char git_more_info_string[] is defined and initialized. Having it this way saves the lookup on each usage I guess but any performance gains will be negligible. Is there a convention? > We have settled with lower-case letters at the beginning of error > messages. (See Documentation/CodingGuidelines, "Error Messages".) You > could fix that while you are touching die, die_errno, etc, messages. Great! It will allow for further reduction in repetition of messages. > I notice you change past tense to present tense in some cases. I am reading this that messages SHOULD be in present tense (unless they MUST be in past tense). This is good. Perhaps I will look at current messages and then fix en masse (if there is sth to fix). > I'm not a friend of geeky abbreviations like "chdir" or "cwd" in > user-visible messages I agree but I would also keep in mind that using the name of the function may alllow to parametrize the messages like: Cannot execute "%s" on "%s" - for example. Anyway this is not that important for me. Will wait for other opinions. >> - die_errno("fork failed"); >> + die_errno(_("fork failed")); >> - die_errno("setsid failed"); >> + die_errno(_("setsid failed")); > it is useful to have the function name in the message. Which rises the > question:why translate them at all? Why not eat the cake while having it - one can pass function name in a message like: '"%s" failed' Regards: al_shopov