From: Giuseppe Scrivano <gscrivano@gnu.org>
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 12:40:43 GMT
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] Print the usage string on stdout instead of stderr.
Message-ID: <87vdamu2es.fsf@thor.thematica.it>
In-Reply-To: <4BF12C96.9030802@drmicha.warpmail.net>

Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:

> More importantly, callers expect error messages on stderr, such as usage
> with wrong arguments. I don't think scripts would call commands with
> '-h', and if they do they do so on purpose and can parse stderr, knowing
> there is no stdout in this case.

It looks like a workaround to me.  Anyway, if -h is left unchanged then,
I think, --help should be adjusted as well when it doesn't use an
external pager.

These two commands behave differently:

git status --help 2>/dev/null | cat -
git status -h 2>/dev/null | cat -

IMO, what should be changed is -h to be uniform with --help, as the it
is the expected output, not an error.

Cheers,
Giuseppe