Re: [PATCH v3 4/4] format-patch: add format.cover-letter configuration

> Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:
>
>>> Wouldn't this work for both cases?
>>>
>>> % git -c format.coverletter=auto format-patch
>>
>> Then, what's the point in having a --cover-letter option?
>>
>> "git -c" is a good last-chance solution, but when we provide the same
>> feature as a command-line option and as a configuration option, I can
>> see no reason to add subtle difference between them.
>
> I do not see a good reason to resist consistency by suggesting a
> workaround.

> We may do so ourselves when responding to an end user
> bug report "I cannot countermand X from the command line" as a first
> response "In the meantime you can work it around like so", but that
> is as you said a last-resort workaround and does not justify why the
> command line interface is lacking an obvious override.

> But I think --cover-letter=auto I made was a bad suggestion.  An
> optional parameter to a command line option is generally bad, as it
> makes the parsing ambiguous [*1*], and turning what traditionally
> was a boolean without any parameter into one that takes an optional
> parameter is even worse.
>
> We should instead add this as a new feature, --auto-cover-letter, or
> something, i.e. the synopsis will have these as the choices
>
>     [--[no-]cover-letter|--auto-cover-letter]
>
> and the last one would win (e.g. "--cover-letter --auto-cover-letter"
> would mean "auto").