Re: [PATCH] Add an optional argument for --color options

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

It's historical. The diff option parser predates parse-options by quite
a bit, and was never converted. Pierre made some attempts at converting
it and the revision parser some time back, and we ended up with the more
iterative approach (you can step through each argument with
parse-options, and then alternatively feed it to the revision and diff
options parser).

I don't remember if there were any technical limitations,...

I think one of the biggie we didn't solve was what to do with the
cascading options table (e.g. log family use both diff and revision in
addition to their own).  The design needs to cover both parsing and also
the help text.