Re: [PATCH v2 01/11] builtin/init: rename "--ref-format=" to "--ref-storage-format="

[Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com>]

On 9/9/26 12:30, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 08, 2026 at 02:31:22PM +0530, Kaartic Sivaraam wrote:
> 
> I'm aiming for a a quiet deprecation -- the old options keep on working,
> but we don't show them anymore. We may eventually remove them
> altogether, but I neither want to warn about use of old options now or
> even remove them as that would likely cause more negative consequences
> than is worth it. It's not like we want to soon use the old names.
> 

Understood.

> 
> But I agree that we should keep the old options documented. Otherwise,
> it might be hard to figure out what those options do in case they for
> example still exist in an old script.
> 

Yeah, makes sense.

>>
>> Relevant only if we are deprecating the old option: We could change the
>> description of the old option to convey that it is deprecated so that it
>> could be easily distinguished by anyone reading through. I suggest this by
>> noting a similar pattern in `builtin/name-rev.c` for the `--stdin` argument.
> 
> We don't really have to update the description as we pass
> `PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN` anyway, so the option is not even shown.
>

Indeed. I was suggesting to change the description only for the sake of 
someone who reads the code to quickly get an idea that we have 
deprecated the old names. The PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN would definitely hint at 
it but this just a suggestion to make it more obvious :-)

That said, it's fine if we don't change the description too. It isn't a 
big deal.

>> If we don't plan to deprecate, I suppose we could use OPT_ALIAS to clarify
>> that `ref-format` is an alias of `ref-storage-format` similar to how
>> `recursive` is marked as an alias of `recurse-submodules` in
>> `builtin/clone.c`.
> 
> I was originally planning to use `OPT_ALIAS()`, but we don't seem to
> support `PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN` there. Maybe it's better to add a small
> preparatory patch to support that though.
> 

Indeed. OPT_ALIAS does have that caveat. A patch to allow the alias to 
be hidden by choice would indeed be worthwhile.

-- 
Sivaraam