Re: [PATCH] git-push: Accept -n as a synonym for --dry-run.

From: Nelson Elhage <nelhage@mit.edu>
Date: Sep 13, 2009, 03:40 UTC
Message-ID: <20090913034031.GO4275@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <7vfxar5zsi.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 07:44:29PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Sign-off?

Signed-off-by: Nelson Elhage <nelhage@mit.edu>

(I can resend the entire patch, but I'll resend with a new commit message if appropriate after any discussion plays itself out).

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> 
> Indeed -n is used in many places for --dry-run, but it is not _the_
> standard way.
> 
> commit, push (as you identified), reflog, and send-email have --dry-run
> but -n is not a synonym for it.  Some of them even use -n as a shorthand
> for a more often used option than --dry-run.

Can you point to an example of a git command supporting --dry-run, and using -n for something else? I personally would find that confusing, since -n is a common alias for dry-run both inside and outside of git (c.f. make, rsync, libtool). I guess patch(1) has that property, but none of your examples from git use -n to mean something else.

In fact, reflog already supports '-n' to mean dry-run, it's just not documented. I'll send along a documentation patch to fix that.

I got the claim that -n was "standard" from parse-options.h, which defines OPT__DRY_RUN, which defines both -n and --dry-run switches at the same time. Given the number of commands that treat them as synonymous, I think it would be a win for UI consistency to make them synonymous everywhere.

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> 
> So the justification should be more like "push does not any other option
> that deserves a short-and-sweet -n better, it will not have any such
> option in the future, and --dry-run is very often used that it deserves to
> use -n as its short-hand."
> 
> I tend to agree with the first two points, but I am not sure about the
> third point.  Do people dry-push that often?

I personally use --dry-run almost every time I push, which is what inspired this patch. Especially now that the push.default can change the behavior of push from repo to repo, I want to be sure I know what I'm about to push. The recent 'git push --confirm' thread suggests I am not the only person with this concern.