Re: [RFH] convert shortlog to use parse_options

On Thu, Dec 13, 2007 at 06:03:47PM +0000, Pierre Habouzit wrote:

On Thu, Dec 13, 2007 at 05:40:23PM +0000, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

Pierre Habouzit [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

In fact we have kind of the issue for every single optional argument out
there:

$ git describe --abbrev HEAD
error: option `abbrev' expects a numerical value
[...]

  *ouch*

So I believe that with optional arguments we must change the way we do
things, and that we _must_ enforce the argument to be sticked in that
case.

I think "Must" is a bit too strong an expression.

	git describe --abbrev 7 HEAD
        git describe --abbrev HEAD
        git describe --abbrev=HEAD
	git describe --abbrev=7 HEAD
	git describe --abbrev

The --abbrev parser in this case could be asked with this question: "You
are on the command line.  There is a token after you.  Is it your
parameter?".

The other issue is that when you had --abbrev=foo or --abbrev foo, the
first one has to generate an error, whereas the second one should just
say "foo" is not for me. The point being that the callback is not really
aware of how the argument got assigned to it.

That means that we will have to pass more flags to callabacks, making it
less easy to write them. Again, I'm not sure that the coding hassle is
worth of the small gain.

-- 
·O·  Pierre Habouzit
··O                                                madcoder@debian.org
OOO                                                http://www.madism.org