Re: possible usability issue in rebase -i?

[Erik Faye-Lund <kusmabite@googlemail.com>]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Baz <brian.ewins@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've got a somewhat related minor usability issue with rebase -i. I
> accidentally typed something like 'git rebase -i -z' and got this
> message:
>
> error: unknown switch `z'
> usage: git-rebase [-i] [options] [--] <upstream> [<branch>]
>   or: git-rebase [-i] (--continue | --abort | --skip)
>
> Available options are
>    -v, --verbose         display a diffstat of what changed upstream
>    --onto ...            rebase onto given branch instead of upstream
>    -p, --preserve-merges
>                          try to recreate merges instead of ignoring them
>    -s, --strategy ...    use the given merge strategy
>    -m, --merge           always used (no-op)
>    -i, --interactive     always used (no-op)
>
> The last two lines were the surprise. It suggested to me that '-i' and
> '-m' were now the defaults for git-rebase - which of course they're
> not. A user would not know that this is actually reporting the flags
> that work for git-rebase--interactive, especially since that's not
> what the command calls itself. I wasn't sure about the best approach
> to fixing this - the only comparable commands that pass arbitrary
> flags down to an exec'd program make it clear what program is going to
> be called (usually git merge) and so interpreting errors is easier.
>
> It seems the intent here was to signal that the flags are different
> once a rebase is in progress, but this usage message is shown when
> rebase -i -z is called in any state.

If that is the case, my instinct tells me that this information should
be reflected in the usage-string (instead of the parameter
description). Something like this?

--->8---

diff --git a/git-rebase--interactive.sh b/git-rebase--interactive.sh
index 23ded48..3ed5f94 100755
--- a/git-rebase--interactive.sh
+++ b/git-rebase--interactive.sh
@@ -13,15 +13,15 @@
 OPTIONS_KEEPDASHDASH=
 OPTIONS_SPEC="\
 git-rebase [-i] [options] [--] <upstream> [<branch>]
-git-rebase [-i] (--continue | --abort | --skip)
+git-rebase [-i] [-m] (--continue | --abort | --skip)
 --
  Available options are
 v,verbose          display a diffstat of what changed upstream
 onto=              rebase onto given branch instead of upstream
 p,preserve-merges  try to recreate merges instead of ignoring them
 s,strategy=        use the given merge strategy
-m,merge            always used (no-op)
-i,interactive      always used (no-op)
+m,merge            use merging strategies
+i,interactive      interactively edit commits
  Actions:
 continue           continue rebasing process
 abort              abort rebasing process and restore original branch

-- 
Erik "kusma" Faye-Lund