Documentation for "git log --all" incorrect

Francis Irving· Oct 29, 2014, 11:51 UTC · lore

The help for "git log --all" says:

       --all
                  Pretend as if all the refs in refs/ are listed on
                  the command line as <commit>.

This makes no sense, as <commit> is not a documented valid command line parameter. These are the documented parameters:

        SYNOPSIS
               git log [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]

Even if it means <revision range>, which is my best guess, it still makes no sense as <revision range> cannot be a list of many refs.

I suspect both the documentation for "--all" and the documentation for the basic options are either incorrect, or confusing by using multiple names for the same thing.

I'm using git 1.9.2

Francis

Jeff King· Oct 29, 2014, 19:54 UTC · re: Francis Irving · lore

Re: Documentation for "git log --all" incorrect

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 11:51:34AM +0000, Francis Irving wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> The help for "git log --all" says:
> 
>        --all
>                   Pretend as if all the refs in refs/ are listed on
>                   the command line as <commit>.
> 
> This makes no sense, as <commit> is not a documented valid command line
> parameter. These are the documented parameters:
> 
>         SYNOPSIS
>                git log [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]
> 
> Even if it means <revision range>, which is my best guess, it still
> makes no sense as <revision range> cannot be a list of many refs.

The text for "--all" comes from rev-list-options.txt, which is included in git-rev-list.txt and git-log.txt. It makes sense in the former but not the latter. One fix would be to use "<commit>" in the synopsis for git-log. But I think it would probably be OK to just drop the "as <commit>" part of the --all text (and other related options need this, too). It seems pretty clear to me without it.

Do you want to try your hand at a patch?

-Peff