Peter Maydell <peter.mayd...@linaro.org> writes: > On 9 November 2015 at 07:44, Markus Armbruster <arm...@redhat.com> wrote: >> For consistency, error messages should be a phrase, not a full sentence, >> let alone a paraphraph. > > This is in direct conflict with wanting them to be actually useful > to users :-(
I appreciate your drive for useful error messages. Judging from the error messages we got, it's a rare thing. Let me rephrase. The error message proper (the thing emitted by error_report()) should be a phrase, and it should be short and to the point. It can be followed by hints. Compare: qemu-system-arm: Unable to determine GIC version supported by host. KVM acceleration is probably not supported. and qemu-system-arm: Unable to determine GIC version supported by host KVM acceleration is probably not supported I prefer the latter. The error message proper is short and to the point. The hint points to the most probable cause. Sensible line lengths. By the way, the error.h API supports this message + hints convention since commit 50b7b00.