Re: [RFH] convert shortlog to use parse_options

[Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>]

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> writes:
> 
>>   Yep, let's do it then. Note that's the reason why I felt we need a
>> manual page about this, because we should give some guidelines of what
>> is safe for scripting.
> 
> There are some fallouts from the series, though.  I've fixed up git-tag
> but I strongly suspect all of parseopt users now need careful auditing.
> If we cannot be confident with the parseoptified commands within
> reasonably short timeframe by -rc1, we may end up having to revert the
> parseopt changes from them, which I'd rather avoid, but if you look at
> the git-tag change (especially for -l) you would understand it.  The
> "must stick" restriction feels Ok on paper but in practice it looks
> rather draconian and very user unfriendly.
> 

Usually, optional arguments warrant adding a second parameter. This can
often even improve usability, as it's never unclear or ambiguous what's
happening. For the 'git tag -l' case, I'd use something like
'git tag -l --match="regex"' or some such, or perhaps make "-l" its own
subcommand ("list") with a built-in alias of -l. That means "-l" has to
be the first argument after "git tag" on the command-line, but I suspect
it doesn't make much sense to use it along with other options anyway, so
perhaps that's not much of an issue.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
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