Re: Convention for help in git commands?

From: Josef Weidendorfer <josef.weidendorfer@gmx.de>
Date: Oct 25, 2005, 21:35 UTC
Message-ID: <200510252335.47917.Josef.Weidendorfer@gmx.de>
In-Reply-To: <46a038f90510251324s50911b88pb5eabb304644bcad@mail.gmail.com>

On Tuesday 25 October 2005 22:24, you wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On 10/26/05, Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> wrote:
> > > * For commands which need at least one argument, the usage
> > > is also printed, if the command is run without argument
> >
> > This is slightly debatable.  I'd rather see it error out for one
> > thing, and we might want to do a sane default given no arguments
> > later.
> 
> This could lead to subtle bugs when git is used by porcelains. If
> there are going to be changes in default behaviours, let's have them
> soon-ish ;-)

What is the difference for a porcelain between error out, presumable with an error message, and printing the usage alone?

Is there any dependency of porcelains to the fact the e.g. "git-rev-list" currently does nothing if not called with a commit-id? Somehow I think "git-rev-list" should give an error, as the usage string (with lots of options on a line of its own ?!) requires a commit-id as argument.

BTW, the error message of "mv" is: === mv: missing file operand Try `mv --help' for more information. === What about something similar to this? Mentioning the command which triggered the error is probably a good idea.

And I would add as another convention:
* "git-cmd -h" always should give the usage, and not error out
with "fatal: Not a git repository" before.

Josef