Re: [PATCH] Documentation: fix misnested -l and --contains in git-tag synopsis

From: Philip Jägenstedt <philip@foolip.org>
Date: Nov 5, 2010, 09:28 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTikXM4BjRHOeS=3mirr9=YRW8sdaHFt05D-9BDxL@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vmxpovq0r.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 20:37, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 47 quoted lines

> Philip Jägenstedt <philip@foolip.org> writes:
>
>> This has been broken since the --contains option was added in
>> commit 32c35cfb1e9c8523b9d60e5095f1c49ebaef0279
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Philip Jägenstedt <philip@foolip.org>
>> ---
>>  Documentation/git-tag.txt |    2 +-
>>  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/git-tag.txt b/Documentation/git-tag.txt
>> index 31c78a8..8ad89d7 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/git-tag.txt
>> +++ b/Documentation/git-tag.txt
>> @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ SYNOPSIS
>>  'git tag' [-a | -s | -u <key-id>] [-f] [-m <msg> | -F <file>]
>>       <tagname> [<commit> | <object>]
>>  'git tag' -d <tagname>...
>> -'git tag' [-n[<num>]] -l [--contains <commit>] [<pattern>]
>> +'git tag' [-n[<num>]] -l [<pattern>] [--contains <commit>]
>>  'git tag' -v <tagname>...
>
> I do not think there is any "mis" nor "nesting" here.  The -l option can
> be used to tell the command to operate in "list tags" mode, and in that
> mode it can use a pattern to limit the output (with or without --contains
> <commit>).  All of these are supported:
>
>    git tag -l --contains v1.7.0 v\*
>    git tag -l v\*
>    git tag --contains v1.7.0 -l v\*
>    git tag -l v\* --contains v1.7.0
>
> IOW, <pattern> is _not_ an optional argument to the -l option.  In fact, I
> think we should support more than one patterns, even though currently this
> seems to silently ignore k\*:
>
>    git tag --contains v1.7.0 -l v\* k\*
>
> As I tend to consider that "limit by pattern" is like pathspecs (in this
> case, it is _not_ a pathspec, though), having the pattern at the end looks
> the most natural, but it may be just me.  And that is why I think we ought
> to accept and apply more than one patterns here.
>
> I would further say that "git tag -l <pattern> --contains <commit>" should
> be an error, even though the command currently seems to take it; perhaps
> parameter reordering is in effect?  I didn't look closely enough.
>

From the documentation it's not clear that -l and --contains are related at all, they look (and behave?) like orthogonal options. If they do in fact interact in some non-obvious way or if -l <pattern> --contains <commit> means something different from -l --contains <commit> <pattern>, it would be great if that were made more clear. (I wouldn't have expected the later to work at all, thus my assumption that there was a typo in the documentation.)

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt