From: Junio C Hamano Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 18:56:34 GMT Subject: Re: Convention for help in git commands? Message-ID: <7vfyqpe87x.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> In-Reply-To: <200510251508.43552.Josef.Weidendorfer@gmx.de> Josef Weidendorfer writes: > * All git commands should react on command line option "-h" > for help, dumping a few lines to stderr, prefixed by "usage:", giving > the command usage without further descriptions. For the usage > output, use the base name of the command, and not the absolute > path to the binary. It drives me nuts when an error message shows only basename not full path and I find out that I was running a wrong executable much later after wasting a lot of time trying to debug it. But I think "usage: " saying the basename only is user friendly and a good convention. > * For commands which need at least one argument, the usage > is also printed, if the command is run without argument This is slightly debatable. I'd rather see it error out for one thing, and we might want to do a sane default given no arguments later. > Perhaps these things should be done only for commands of the > git lightwight porcelain? Probably.