read-version: enhance error message

The error message when read-vesion is not very useful and does not help
the end-user know how to overcome the issue. This adds a short message
explaining that the user does not have the latest upstream tags and how
to get those tags.

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/tools/read-version b/tools/read-version
index 3ea9e66e..e69c2ce0 100755
--- a/tools/read-version
+++ b/tools/read-version
@@ -76,6 +76,12 @@ if is_gitdir(_tdir) and which("git"):
     if not version.startswith(src_version):
         sys.stderr.write("git describe version (%s) differs from "
                          "cloudinit.version (%s)\n" % (version, src_version))
+        sys.stderr.write(
+            "Please get the latest upstream tags.\n"
+            "As an example, this can be done with the following:\n"
+            "$ git remote add upstream https://git.launchpad.net/cloud-init\n"
+            "$ git fetch upstream --tags\n"
+        )
         sys.exit(1)
 
     version_long = tiny_p(cmd + ["--long"]).strip()