Re: git alias and --help

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Gelonida N <gelonida@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Is there any trick to get the help text of git branch without
>> having to type
>>
>> git branch --help
>
> How about "git help branch"?

It was bad of me to write a tongue-in-cheek answer, get distracted and
ended up sending it without the real answer.

The reason why we do not do what you seem to be suggesting is because
giving the same behaviour to "git b --help" as "git branch --help" is
wrong.

To see why, imagine you have configured an alias that is not a simple and
stupid substitution "b == branch", but something like "bt == branch -t",
and then want to know what you should write after "git bt".  Giving the
manpage for branch without giving them any hint that they configured that
alias to produce customized behaviour that is different from plain vanilla
"branch" is not quite acceptable.

I think you _could_ make a patch that special cases a simple and straight
substitution and skip the "foo is aliased to bar" step, but I doubt it is
worth it to lose consistency between "git b --help" vs "git bt --help"
that way.