Re: [RFH] convert shortlog to use parse_options

From: Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date: Dec 17, 2007, 07:36 UTC
Message-ID: <47662715.9070200@op5.se>
In-Reply-To: <7vir2xeq76.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> writes:
> 
>>   Yep, let's do it then. Note that's the reason why I felt we need a
>> manual page about this, because we should give some guidelines of what
>> is safe for scripting.
> 
> There are some fallouts from the series, though.  I've fixed up git-tag
> but I strongly suspect all of parseopt users now need careful auditing.
> If we cannot be confident with the parseoptified commands within
> reasonably short timeframe by -rc1, we may end up having to revert the
> parseopt changes from them, which I'd rather avoid, but if you look at
> the git-tag change (especially for -l) you would understand it.  The
> "must stick" restriction feels Ok on paper but in practice it looks
> rather draconian and very user unfriendly.
>

Usually, optional arguments warrant adding a second parameter. This can often even improve usability, as it's never unclear or ambiguous what's happening. For the 'git tag -l' case, I'd use something like 'git tag -l --match="regex"' or some such, or perhaps make "-l" its own subcommand ("list") with a built-in alias of -l. That means "-l" has to be the first argument after "git tag" on the command-line, but I suspect it doesn't make much sense to use it along with other options anyway, so perhaps that's not much of an issue.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231