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Re: [PATCH v2] help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commands

From
John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>
Date
Aug 16, 2016, 10:06 UTC
Message-ID
<20160816100633.be55qsbnlmlm37dr@john.keeping.me.uk>
In-Reply-To
<C8DDA334A45E4B558FD1EFB191E047C9@PhilipOakley>
On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 09:40:54PM +0100, Philip Oakley wrote:
Show 28 quoted lines
> From: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>
> > "Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org> writes:
> >
> >> I'm still not sure this is enough. One of the problems back when I
> >> introduced the --guides option (65f9835 (builtin/help.c: add --guide
> >> option, 2013-04-02)) was that we had no easy way of determining what
> >> guides were available, especially given the *nix/Windows split where
> >> the help defaults are different (--man/--html).
> >>
> >> At the time[1] we (I) punted on trying to determine which guides were
> >> actually installed, and just created a short list of the important
> >> guides, which I believe you now check. However the less common guides
> >> are still there (gitcvs-migration?), and others may be added locally.
> >
> > I think we should do both; "git help cvs-migration" should keep the
> > same codeflow and behaviour as we have today (so that it would still
> > work), while "git cvs-migration --help" should say "'cvs-migration'
> > is not a git command".  That would be a good clean-up anyway.
> >
> > It obviously cannot be done if git.c::handle_builtin() does the same
> > "swap <word> --help to help <word>" hack, but we could improve that
> > part (e.g. rewrite it to "help --swapped <word>" to allow cmd_help()
> > to notice).  When the user said "<word> --help", we don't do guides,
> > when we swapped the word order, we check with guides, too.
> >
> The other option is to simply build a guide-list in exactly the same format 
> as the command list (which if it works can be merged later). Re-use the 
> existing code, etc.

One nice thing at the moment is that third-party Git commands can install documentation and have "git help" work correctly (shameless plug for git-integration[1] which does this). I think Junio's suggestion above keeps that working whereas having a hardcoded list of guides will break this.

[1] https://github.com/johnkeeping/git-integration
Previous: Junio C HamanoNext: Ralf Thielow
Message 17 of 46 in “`git stash --help` tries to pull up nonexistent file gitstack.html”
  1. Joseph MusserAug 12, 2016
  2. Junio C HamanoAug 12, 2016
  3. Lars SchneiderAug 12, 2016
  4. Joseph MusserAug 12, 2016
  5. Junio C HamanoAug 12, 2016
  6. Jacob KellerAug 12, 2016
  7. help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commandsRalf Thielow, Aug 12, 2016
  8. Junio C HamanoAug 12, 2016
  9. Junio C HamanoAug 12, 2016
  10. Philip OakleyAug 13, 2016
  11. Junio C HamanoAug 13, 2016
  12. help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commandsRalf Thielow, Aug 15, 2016
  13. Philip OakleyAug 15, 2016
  14. Junio C HamanoAug 15, 2016
  15. Philip OakleyAug 15, 2016
  16. Junio C HamanoAug 15, 2016
  17. John KeepingAug 16, 2016
  18. help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commandsRalf Thielow, Aug 16, 2016
  19. John KeepingAug 16, 2016
  20. Ralf ThielowAug 16, 2016
  21. Junio C HamanoAug 16, 2016
  22. Ralf ThielowAug 16, 2016
  23. Junio C HamanoAug 16, 2016
  24. 0/2 help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commandsRalf Thielow, Aug 18, 2016
  25. 1/2 help: introduce option --command-onlyRalf Thielow, Aug 18, 2016
  26. Philip OakleyAug 18, 2016
  27. 2/2 help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commandsRalf Thielow, Aug 18, 2016
  28. Junio C HamanoAug 18, 2016
  29. Ralf ThielowAug 23, 2016
  30. Remi Galan AlfonsoAug 19, 2016
  31. Ralf ThielowAug 23, 2016
  32. Johannes SchindelinAug 19, 2016
  33. Junio C HamanoAug 19, 2016
  34. Ralf ThielowAug 23, 2016
  35. Johannes SchindelinAug 24, 2016
  36. 0/3 help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commandsRalf Thielow, Aug 26, 2016
  37. 1/3 Revert "display HTML in default browser using Windows' shell API"Ralf Thielow, Aug 26, 2016
  38. 3/3 help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commandsRalf Thielow, Aug 26, 2016
  39. 2/3 help: introduce option --exclude-guidesRalf Thielow, Aug 26, 2016
  40. Junio C HamanoAug 26, 2016
  41. Junio C HamanoAug 26, 2016
  42. Ralf ThielowAug 26, 2016
  43. Junio C HamanoAug 26, 2016
  44. Ralf ThielowAug 26, 2016
  45. Junio C HamanoAug 26, 2016
  46. Ralf ThielowAug 26, 2016

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