Re: [PATCH/RFC 5/5] help: add "-a --verbose" to list all commands with synopsis

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Apr 9, 2018, 09:55 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cSwDpWOz2_PAZOCmdhoYXYhYR0fHsw8POgNDfd9nD2Q1A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqh8ok679l.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 5:47 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:
>> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 12:55 PM, Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy
>> <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> +       switch (category) {
>>> +       case CAT_ancillaryinterrogators: return _("Ancillary interrogators");
>>> +       case CAT_ancillarymanipulators: return _("Ancillary manipulators");
>>> +       case CAT_foreignscminterface: return _("Foreign SCM interface");
>>> +       case CAT_mainporcelain: return _("Main porcelain");
>>> +       case CAT_plumbinginterrogators: return _("Plumbing interrogators");
>>> +       case CAT_plumbingmanipulators: return _("Plumbing interrogators");
>>
>> s/interrogators"/manipulators"/
>>
>>> +       case CAT_purehelpers: return _("Pure helpers");
>>> +       case CAT_synchelpers: return _("Sync helpers");
>>> +       case CAT_synchingrepositories: return _("Synching repositories");
>
> Somehow this screams "an array of strings" at me.  Aren't this
> CAT_things small and dense enum?

Duy's modified generate-cmdlist.sh does actually output an array of strings for these, but the (generated) array is commented out in this RFC. I suppose the reason it's not presently used is because the array looks like this:

static const char *cmd_categories[] = {
    "ancillaryinterrogators",
    "ancillarymanipulators",
    "foreignscminterface",
    "mainporcelain",
    "plumbinginterrogators",
    "plumbingmanipulators",
    "purehelpers",
    "synchelpers",
    "synchingrepositories",
     NULL
};

which doesn't give quite the human-friendly output he'd like. The series is RFC, after all.

A possible approach to fix it would be to add a new "### categories" section to command-list.txt which associates those category tags ("ancillaryinterrogators") with human-readable counterparts ("Ancillary interrogators").