From: Namhyung Kim Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 06:46:30 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] help: Add '--follow-alias' option Message-ID: <4F619046.1050308@lge.com> In-Reply-To: <7vvcm6l6w0.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> 2012-03-15 3:23 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > 김남형 writes: >> 2012-03-15 3:00 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: >>> Namhyung Kim writes: >>> >>>> The --follow-alias option will look up the alias definitions and >>>> use the first word as a command. For example, if I set my aliases >>>> as follows: >>>> >>>> $ git help br >>>> `git br' is aliased to `git branch' >>>> $ git help ru >>>> `git ru' is aliased to `git remote update' >>>> >>>> adding --follow-alias (or -f) option will show man pages of >>>> git-branch and git-remote, respectively. >>> >>> What would happen when somebody has this? >>> >>> [alias] >>> br = branch --list >>> >>> $ git help --follow-alias br >>> ... man page for git-branch is shown ... >>> >>> NAK. >> >> I'm sorry I don't understand what you meant by this. What should be >> happened for this? > > You _somehow_ restict the output, or at least draw the user's attention, > to the description of --list mode in the resulting "git-branch" manual. > > I do not think that is feasible. > Actually I was thinking about moving to an appropriate point in the document by checking second argument (if any) and searching it (using regexp?). But I coundn't be sure it'd be possible too. > But showing the whole manual page, without telling the user that "br" is > not aliased to a plain vanilla "branch" without any option, is not a > solution, especially if you are going to let the user set a configuration > variable to allow him to forget about this setting. Progressive revelation > would not have such a downside and I think it is more appropriate approach > for something like "help". > OK. That makes sense to me too. This was just a quick thought hoping that can be helpful for someone who uses alias as a simple abbreviation. Thanks for taking your time and giving me detailed comments. Namhyung