For debuggers aid we'd want to print debug statements early, so introduce a new line in the debug output that describes the whole function, and then change the next debug output to describe why we need to search. Conveniently drop the arg from the second line; which will be useful in a follow up commit, that refactors the\ describe function. Signed-off-by: Stefan Beller <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx> --- builtin/describe.c | 5 ++++- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/builtin/describe.c b/builtin/describe.c index fd61f463cf..3136efde31 100644 --- a/builtin/describe.c +++ b/builtin/describe.c @@ -293,6 +293,9 @@ static void describe(const char *arg, int last_one) unsigned long seen_commits = 0; unsigned int unannotated_cnt = 0; + if (debug) + fprintf(stderr, _("describe %s\n"), arg); + if (get_oid(arg, &oid)) die(_("Not a valid object name %s"), arg); cmit = lookup_commit_reference(&oid); @@ -316,7 +319,7 @@ static void describe(const char *arg, int last_one) if (!max_candidates) die(_("no tag exactly matches '%s'"), oid_to_hex(&cmit->object.oid)); if (debug) - fprintf(stderr, _("searching to describe %s\n"), arg); + fprintf(stderr, _("No exact match on refs or tags, searching to describe\n")); if (!have_util) { struct hashmap_iter iter; -- 2.15.0.7.g980e40477f