Re: possible usability issue in rebase -i?

> I've got a somewhat related minor usability issue with rebase -i. I
> accidentally typed something like 'git rebase -i -z' and got this
> message:
>
> error: unknown switch `z'
> usage: git-rebase [-i] [options] [--] <upstream> [<branch>]
>   or: git-rebase [-i] (--continue | --abort | --skip)
>
> Available options are
>    -v, --verbose         display a diffstat of what changed upstream
>    --onto ...            rebase onto given branch instead of upstream
>    -p, --preserve-merges
>                          try to recreate merges instead of ignoring them
>    -s, --strategy ...    use the given merge strategy
>    -m, --merge           always used (no-op)
>    -i, --interactive     always used (no-op)
>
> The last two lines were the surprise. It suggested to me that '-i' and
> '-m' were now the defaults for git-rebase - which of course they're
> not. A user would not know that this is actually reporting the flags
> that work for git-rebase--interactive, especially since that's not
> what the command calls itself. I wasn't sure about the best approach
> to fixing this - the only comparable commands that pass arbitrary
> flags down to an exec'd program make it clear what program is going to
> be called (usually git merge) and so interpreting errors is easier.
>
> It seems the intent here was to signal that the flags are different
> once a rebase is in progress, but this usage message is shown when
> rebase -i -z is called in any state.