>Bear in mind that simply setting an inputs $dirty to false (even when there are no other dirty controls) will not cause the form $dirty to be re-evaluated. You may need something like this in your directive after $setPristine():

var dirty = false;
>angular.forEach(scope.theForm, function (value, key) {
>    if (key[0] != '$') {
>        if (value.$dirty) {
>                dirty = true;
>        }
>    }
>});
>if (!dirty) {
>scope.theForm.$setPristine();
>}

This will reset the form if all inputs are pristine.....
>

For this code to work do I need to add

require: ['^form'],

and use scope.form syntax where you used scope.theForm

?