Re: Using '--help' for aliases

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 21, 2017, 18:55 UTC
Message-ID: <20170621185518.nhnqlkbt63hdoate@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <1498070489.32360.14.camel@gmail.com>

On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 12:11:29AM +0530, Kaartic Sivaraam wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> I am yet another user of 'git alias' (who wouldn't ?). It has become so
> natural to me to use the aliased version that at some point of time I
> tried the following,
> 
> > $ git co --help
> > `git co' is aliased to `checkout'
> 
> That made me wonder. Git is able to inform the user that 'co' is
> aliased to 'checkout' but isn't it possible for it to take one step
> more to display help ? Just wondering if there were any reason for not
> doing it.

It could do that. I think we even discussed it at one point, but I didn't dig up the thread. However, you have the problem that running "man checkout" is likely to clobber the mention of the alias. So the question is whether it is more important to tell the user that it's an alias (and which options the alias is using!), or to show them the referred command's manpage.

-Peff