From: Junio C Hamano Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 22:42:41 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v9 11/11] Documentation: add documentation for 'git interpret-trailers' Message-ID: In-Reply-To: Junio C Hamano writes: > Christian Couder writes: > ... >>> Why support both '=' and ':'? Using just one would make it easier to >>> grep through scripts to see who is adding signoffs. >> >> That was already discussed previously. > > I do recall it was discussed previously, but given that a new reader > posed the same question, I am not sure if the end result in this > patch under discussion sufficiently answers the question in a > satisfactory way. > > Thanks. Sorry, I sent out only a half-response before finishing. >> The reason is that people are used to "token=value" for command line >> arguments, but trailers appears in the result as "token: value", so it >> is better for the user if we support both. While I do understand the part before ", so" on the second line, I do not see why that leads to the conclusion at all. Yes, because it is a well-established convention to separate option name with its parameter with '=', accepting "--option=parameter" makes sense. That may result in a string "Option: parameter" added to the output from the command. I am not sure why that output has anything to do with how the command line should be specified.