From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:47:15 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 09/13] revert: Catch incompatible command-line options early
Message-ID: <BANLkTinN6KdPnuMWbrdE4jf4ijKDC=35Aw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20110621170416.GN15461@elie>

Hi again,

Jonathan Nieder writes:
> Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:
>> Earlier, incompatible command-line options used to be caught in
>> pick_commits after parse_args has parsed the options and populated the
>> options structure.  Instead, hand over the responsibility of catching
>> incompatible command-line options to parse_args so that the program
>> can die early.
>
> The "Earlier ... used to" phrasing is tripping me up again.
>
> The naive reader (i.e., me) wonders: how long does this option parsing
> and populating the options structure that we want to delay until after
> verify_opt_compatible take?  Does that delay matter or is there some
> other reason for this change?


I've tried to spell out the motivation for this change more clearly in
my latest iteration.  Does this look alright?

    revert: Catch incompatible command-line options in parse_args

    Some incompatible command-line options are caught in pick_commits
    after parse_args has parsed the options and populated the options
    structure.  Change this so that parse_args only parses valid
    command-line options instead of returning an unusable options
    structure.  However, this does not mean that we will never need to
    check the options structure; when a sequencer API is written future,
    callers will call in with a pre-populated options structure whose
    validity we will still need to check.  Also, provide a
    verify_opt_compatible function to handle incompatible options in a
    general manner.


-- Ram