Documentation for "git log --all" incorrect

Documentation for "git log --all" incorrect

[Francis Irving]

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

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

[Jeff King]

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

> 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