Re: [PATCH/RFC] commit: add short option for --amend

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 17, 2018, 06:47 UTC
Message-ID: <20180817064734.GB131749@aiede.svl.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180816183117.13716-1-pclouds@gmail.com>

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> --- a/builtin/commit.c
> +++ b/builtin/commit.c
> @@ -1489,7 +1489,7 @@ int cmd_commit(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
>  			    STATUS_FORMAT_LONG),
>  		OPT_BOOL('z', "null", &s.null_termination,
>  			 N_("terminate entries with NUL")),
> -		OPT_BOOL(0, "amend", &amend, N_("amend previous commit")),
> +		OPT_BOOL('j', "amend", &amend, N_("amend previous commit")),

[...]

> Thoughts?

I'm not a fan. I would have trouble remembering what the short option name means, and it matches the common --jobs option for parallelism that many commands use. "git commit --am" works today already and doesn't run into those problems.

I'm sympathetic to the goal of saving typing, but I'm more sympathetic to the goal of making user support easier, which is what makes me end up there.

That said, I've been looking recently at Mercurial's "hg evolve" extension[1] and I wouldn't be against a well thought out new command (e.g. "git amend") that does the equivalent of "git commit --amend" with some related features. So I think there are some paths forward that involve abbreviating.

Thanks, Jonathan

[1] https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/EvolveExtension