From: Rob Barrett <barrettboy@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:01:00 GMT
Subject: Usability question
Message-ID: <513ca40e0909170301s2b09184akb27acde76975c09b@mail.gmail.com>

When starting with git people almost always ask some variant of "how
do I know whether this option should be prefixed with dashes or not?"
i.e. git reset --hard vs. git stash save --patch, which coupled with
other path, sha and treeish args make things a bit more confusing.

Not sure if this has been discussed before? If it has point me at the
discussion and I'll go look at it -- no need to read further.

And people stop asking the question after they get used to git - but
that's not the same as being usable.

Out of 60+ commands, most take the form
git <subcommand> [--option]
and a few take the form
git <subcommand> subsubcommand [--option]

(a quick scan gives: bisect,bundle,reflog,remote,stash)

My questions:
1. What is the distinction that makes the 10% special enough to get
non-prefixed options?
2. Is it worthwhile? Wouldn't it be better if to shoot for more
consistency / less complexity?

Rob