Re: [PATCH] Add an optional <mode> argument to commit/status -u|--untracked-files option

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 3, 2008, 22:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20080603222704.GA20256@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <4845B4E8.1040402@trolltech.com>

On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 11:17:28PM +0200, Marius Storm-Olsen wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> You are right. This is the joy of the parse-options() handling of  
> short-options with optional arguments.
>
> -us before meant:
>     1) commit
>     2) show all untracked files
>     3) sign-of the commit
>
> I guess it would be possible to reparse the options without the -u, if  
> the argument is not one of the three (none,normal,all), but I'm not sure 
> it's _that_ critical. Opinions?

I think it would be reasonable to make "-u" mean the same as always, and for "--untracked-files" to have an optional argument. There isn't direct support for that construct in parse_options, but you could just make it two separate options that happen to tweak the same value (though I guess they would be displayed separately in the auto-generated usage).

Some GNU utils use this strategy to extend existing options. E.g., "ls -p" comes from XSI and takes no argument, but the long-option form of --indicator-style=<none|slash|file-type|classify> gives more options.

That makes it a little less pleasant to type the extended version, but compatibility is maintained. Though I tend to wonder about this option in particular...isn't this generally a user preference? Should it perhaps be found in the config file instead?

-Peff