Re: Custom subcommand help handlers

["Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Dec 18 2021, Sean Allred wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I've got a custom subcommand I'm distributing in my company to
> integrate with our bug-tracker. It's a pretty robust utility and has
> its own help function, but running `git foo --help` doesn't pass
> --help to my git-foo utility. I asked a question[1] about this
> scenario on the Windows fork and they directed me upstream.
>
> It sounds like `git foo --help` is internally consumed as `git help
> foo`, which forwards requests to info/man/web handlers per config.
> Being on Windows and knowing my peers as I do, the vast majority of my
> users won't be familiar with info or man. The HTML documentation used
> by the web handler is in a Git4Win-controlled installation directory
> that I'd really rather not touch/maintain. I really just want `git foo
> --help` to call `git-foo --help`.
>
> What's the best way to go about this?
>
> In the event the best next step is to start a patch, does it sound
> reasonable to simply not perform this `git foo --help` -> `git help
> foo` transformation for non-builtins? Or, while I don't relish the
> idea, would some kind of config option be needed?
>
> Best,
> Sean Allred
>
> [1]: https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/discussions/3553

I don't know if there's a solution that'll please everyone here, but
it's definitely not narrowing this to built-ins. E.g. "git send-email
--help" will expect to show the manual, so will "git annex --help".