Re: [PATCH] Add subcommand "help" to the list of most commonly used subcommands

From: Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com>
Date: Jun 5, 2008, 18:42 UTC
Message-ID: <F9BB4443-EDCA-4941-9852-B84535DAD097@wincent.com>
In-Reply-To: <7viqwn3g3r.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

El 5/6/2008, a las 20:13, Junio C Hamano escribió:

Show 20 quoted lines

> It is reasonable to mention 'help' somewhere in the output, but if  
> we are
> going to do this, we should make it stand out.  Perhaps like this.
>
> -- >8 --
> $ git
> usage: git [--version] ...
>
> The most commonly used git commands are:
>   add        Add file contents to the index
>   bisect     Find the change that introduced a bug by binary search
>   branch     List, create, or delete branches
>   ...
>   show       Show various types of objects
>   status     Show the working tree status
>   tag        Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with  
> GPG
>
> See 'man git' and 'git help' for more information.
> -- 8< --

But if the user types "git help" they'll be presented with the exact same list of common commands again, at which point they'll probably wonder why Git suggested that.

Funnily enough, if they type "git help help" then they'll get the "git- help" man page. So, there is no command called "git-help" on the system, but from the user's perspective it walks, talks and quacks like all the "real" commands, and so they probably consider it to be one. Whether or not the "help" subcommand corresponds to a real executable or script is really just an implementation detail, I think.

Having said that, I think your suggestion is sound if it were reworded as:

   See 'man git' and 'git help [command]' for more information.

Cheers, Wincent