On Tue, 16 Nov 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > Documentation/CodingGuidelines says “do not end error messages with a
> > full stop” and “do not capitalize the first word”.  Reviewers requested
> > updating the existing messages to comply with these guidelines prior to
> > the following patches.
> 
> Thanks.  Whether reviewers requested or you thought of it on your
> own, separating such a preliminary clean-up into its own patch would
> be a good idea, especially if the later patches need to update (some
> of) them.

It was your request; I just mentioned it in case other reviewers wonder 
why this belongs in this topic.

https://public-inbox.org/git/xmqq8rxvwp4b.fsf@gitster.g/

> The approach chosen (consistently) in this patch is to
> 
>  (1) turn them into a (semi) single sentence, concatenated with ';'
> 
>  (2) as a side effect of not being a free-standing sentence anymore,
>      the second and subsequent sentences in the original, that are
>      now just pieces in a single sentence separated with ';', do not
>      get capitalized, and
> 
>  (3) the sentence as a whole lacks the full-stop, just like a single
>      sentence message.
> 
> I think we are fine with these rules, especially given that these
> multi-sentence messages are not the main part of this topic touches
> and are not the primary focus of this topic anyway.  

I guess I should add that there are a few messages I left alone: 
refuse_unconfigured_deny_msg and 
refuse_unconfigured_deny_delete_current_msg in builtin/receive-pack.c 
(patch 2/8).  Not sure if they count as “error messages”, but these 
multi-paragraph messages are too long to comfortably apply this approach.

Now I see that I missed a few others.  This could be squashed into the 
first three patches:

diff --git a/builtin/fetch.c b/builtin/fetch.c
index f373252490..f3c7c057d0 100644
--- a/builtin/fetch.c
+++ b/builtin/fetch.c
@@ -1783,7 +1783,7 @@ static int fetch_failed_to_start(struct strbuf *out, void *cb, void *task_cb)
 	struct parallel_fetch_state *state = cb;
 	const char *remote = task_cb;
 
-	state->result = error(_("Could not fetch %s"), remote);
+	state->result = error(_("could not fetch %s"), remote);
 
 	return 0;
 }
@@ -1838,7 +1838,7 @@ static int fetch_multiple(struct string_list *list, int max_children)
 			if (verbosity >= 0)
 				printf(_("Fetching %s\n"), name);
 			if (run_command_v_opt(argv.v, RUN_GIT_CMD)) {
-				error(_("Could not fetch %s"), name);
+				error(_("could not fetch %s"), name);
 				result = 1;
 			}
 			strvec_pop(&argv);
diff --git a/builtin/receive-pack.c b/builtin/receive-pack.c
index d72058543e..70b4e23a26 100644
--- a/builtin/receive-pack.c
+++ b/builtin/receive-pack.c
@@ -2495,9 +2495,9 @@ int cmd_receive_pack(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
 	argc = parse_options(argc, argv, prefix, options, receive_pack_usage, 0);
 
 	if (argc > 1)
-		usage_msg_opt(_("Too many arguments."), receive_pack_usage, options);
+		usage_msg_opt(_("too many arguments"), receive_pack_usage, options);
 	if (argc == 0)
-		usage_msg_opt(_("You must specify a directory."), receive_pack_usage, options);
+		usage_msg_opt(_("you must specify a directory"), receive_pack_usage, options);
 
 	service_dir = argv[0];
 
diff --git a/branch.c b/branch.c
index 3a7d205fa4..0bea1335ae 100644
--- a/branch.c
+++ b/branch.c
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ int install_branch_config(int flag, const char *local, const char *origin, const
 	if (skip_prefix(remote, "refs/heads/", &shortname)
 	    && !strcmp(local, shortname)
 	    && !origin) {
-		warning(_("Not setting branch %s as its own upstream."),
+		warning(_("not setting branch %s as its own upstream"),
 			local);
 		return 0;
 	}
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ int install_branch_config(int flag, const char *local, const char *origin, const
 
 out_err:
 	strbuf_release(&key);
-	error(_("Unable to write upstream branch configuration"));
+	error(_("unable to write upstream branch configuration"));
 
 	advise(_(tracking_advice),
 	       origin ? origin : "",

Anders