Re: Convention for help in git commands?

On Tuesday 25 October 2005 22:24, you wrote:

On 10/26/05, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

quoted

* For commands which need at least one argument, the usage
is also printed, if the command is run without argument

This is slightly debatable.  I'd rather see it error out for one
thing, and we might want to do a sane default given no arguments
later.

This could lead to subtle bugs when git is used by porcelains. If
there are going to be changes in default behaviours, let's have them
soon-ish ;-)

What is the difference for a porcelain between error out,
presumable with an error message, and printing the usage alone?

Is there any dependency of porcelains to the fact the e.g.
"git-rev-list" currently does nothing if not called with a
commit-id? Somehow I think "git-rev-list" should give an error,
as the usage string (with lots of options on a line of its own ?!)
requires a commit-id as argument.

BTW, the error message of "mv" is:
===
mv: missing file operand
Try `mv --help' for more information.
===
What about something similar to this? Mentioning the command
which triggered the error is probably a good idea.

And I would add as another convention:
* "git-cmd -h" always should give the usage, and not error out
with "fatal: Not a git repository" before.

Josef