Re: [PATCH 2/3] help: Add '--follow-alias' option

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 15, 2012, 06:23 UTC
Message-ID: <7vvcm6l6w0.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <4F6188FB.7020406@lge.com>

김남형 <namhyung.kim@lge.com> writes:

Show 27 quoted lines

> 2012-03-15 3:00 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Namhyung Kim<namhyung.kim@lge.com>  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.

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".