From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:48:23 GMT
Subject: Re: git.c option parsing
Message-ID: <7vsl21aeqw.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <F6F3247E-4E71-4977-9626-F0571278E1E6@wincent.com>

Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com> writes:

> Of course, the above plan will only work for builtins, not for  
> scripts. An additional step would be needed to enable scripts to  
> handle these options; perhaps teaching "git rev-parse" something...

As long as special options stay special and we make a rule not to allow
any subcommand to assign its own meaning to them, the git wrapper can
lookahead and reorder, when seeing a command line:

	git scripted-command --special

into

	git --special scripted-command

And that approach would work well for built-ins as well, I would
imagine.

There is one minor detail, though.  There could be an option-parameter
that is literally --special.  E.g.

	git grep -e --no-paginate

should not be reordered to

	git --no-paginate grep -e