Re: [PATCH v1 1/4] refs: avoid "too many arguments"

From: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date: Aug 6, 2024, 06:13 UTC
Message-ID: <ZrG_A3UQk56aYJ_m@tanuki>
In-Reply-To: <20240806003539.3292562-2-gitster@pobox.com>

On Mon, Aug 05, 2024 at 05:35:36PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> diff --git a/t/t1460-refs-migrate.sh b/t/t1460-refs-migrate.sh
> index f7c0783d30..b32e740001 100755
> --- a/t/t1460-refs-migrate.sh
> +++ b/t/t1460-refs-migrate.sh
> @@ -31,9 +31,10 @@ test_expect_success "superfluous arguments" '
>  	test_when_finished "rm -rf repo" &&
>  	git init repo &&
>  	test_must_fail git -C repo refs migrate foo 2>err &&
> -	cat >expect <<-EOF &&
> -	usage: too many arguments
> -	EOF
> +	{
> +		printf "fatal: unknown argument: ${SQ}foo${SQ}\n\n" &&
> +		( git -C repo refs migrate -h || : )
> +	} >expect &&

I always have to wonder how helpful it really is to print the usage information in such a context. I feel that it is too distracting because in many cases, we end up printing dozens of lines of options that drown out the single line of information that the user actually cares for, namely why the command has failed.

In this case here it is somewhat manageable, because only 4/5th of the output are unnecessary noise. But the picture changes as commands grow more options over time, making the output less and less usable.

So while I think that it is a big improvement to explicitly point out the unknown argument, I think it is step backwards to also print the usage info.

Patrick