Re: [PATCH v2 1/5] help: correct the usage string in -h and documentation

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 11, 2021, 01:12 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqr1dvoqyo.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <patch-v2-1.5-b10bfd21f14-20210910T112545Z-avarab@gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> diff --git a/Documentation/git-help.txt b/Documentation/git-help.txt
> index 44fe8860b3f..568a0b606f3 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-help.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-help.txt
> @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ SYNOPSIS
>  --------
>  [verse]
>  'git help' [-a|--all [--[no-]verbose]] [-g|--guides]
> -	   [-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND|GUIDE]
> +	   [[-i|--info] [-m|--man] [-w|--web]] [COMMAND|GUIDE]

This one is good, but ...

Show 11 quoted lines

> diff --git a/builtin/help.c b/builtin/help.c
> index b7eec06c3de..44ea2798cda 100644
> --- a/builtin/help.c
> +++ b/builtin/help.c
> @@ -59,7 +59,8 @@ static struct option builtin_help_options[] = {
>  };
>  
>  static const char * const builtin_help_usage[] = {
> -	N_("git help [--all] [--guides] [--man | --web | --info] [<command>]"),
> +	N_("git help [-a|--all] [-g|--guides] [--[no-]verbose]]\n"
> +	   "         [[-i|--info] [-m|--man] [-w|--web]] [<command>]"),

Aside from the addition of so-far-missing "verbose", which is obviously a good change, I am not sure if the other change is a good idea.

This is because *_usage[] is designed to be always shown together with the list of options built from the option table the parse_options() uses, and the readers will see the correspondence between long and short options even more clear there.

    $ git help -h
    usage: git help [--all] [--guides] [--man | --web | --info] [<command>]

        -a, --all             print all available commands
        -g, --guides          print list of useful guides
        -c, --config          print all configuration variable names
        -m, --man             show man page
        -w, --web             show manual in web browser
        -i, --info            show info page
        -v, --verbose         print command description

If you look at output from

    $ git grep -A4 -e '_usage\[' builtin/\*.c

you'll notice that many of them do not even spell out each option and instead have a single [<options>] placeholder unless the command has only very small number of options. With the number of options that "git help" takes, it might even be warranted to switch to the more generic "git help [<option>...] [<command>]".

Not a strict veto, but just making sure if the over-cluttering of the early lines in "help -h" output has been considered as a possible downside before suggesting this change.

Thanks.