Re: [PATCH 2/2] help: make option --help open man pages only for Git commands
From: Junio C Hamano <hidden>
Date: 2016-08-19 01:11:03
Ralf Thielow [off-list ref] writes:
If option --help is passed to a Git command, we try to open the man page of that command. However, we do it even for commands we don't know. Make sure it is a Git command.
What the patch does is correct, I think, but the explanation may
invite a false alarm. If you added a custom command git-who in your
$PATH, with an appropriate documentation for git-who(1), we would
still show its documentation, no?
The same comment applies to 1/2, too, in that the word "command"
will be interpreted differently by different people. For example,
"git co --help" and "git help co" would work, with or without 1/2 in
place when you have "[alias] co = checkout", so we are calling "Git
subcommands that we ship, custom commands 'git-$foo' the users have
in their $PATH, and aliases the users create" collectively "command".
As long as the reader understands that definition, both the log
messages of 1/2 and 2/2 _and_ the updated description for "git help"
we have in 1/2 are all very clear. I do not care too much about the
commit log message, but we may want to think about the documentation
a bit more.
Here is what 1/2 adds to "git help" documentation:
+Note that `git --help ...` is almost identical to `git help ...` because
+the former is internally converted into the latter with option --command-only
+being added.
To display the linkgit:git[1] man page, use `git help git`.
@@ -43,6 +44,10 @@ OPTIONS
Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This
option overrides any given command or guide name.
+-c::
+--command-only::
+ Display help information only for commands.
+
First, I do not think a short form is unnecessary; the users are not
expected to use that form, once they started typing "git help...".
If we flip the polarity and call it --exclude-guides or something,
would it make it less ambiguous?
This breaks "git <concept> --help" while "git help <concept>" still works.
I wouldn't call that a breakage; "git everyday --help" shouldn't have worked in the first place. It did something useful merely by accident ;-).
quoted hunk
diff --git a/git.c b/git.c index 0f1937f..2cd2e06 100644 --- a/git.c +++ b/git.c@@ -528,10 +528,23 @@ static void handle_builtin(int argc, const char **argv) strip_extension(argv); cmd = argv[0]; - /* Turn "git cmd --help" into "git help cmd" */ + /* Turn "git cmd --help" into "git help --command-only cmd" */ if (argc > 1 && !strcmp(argv[1], "--help")) { + struct argv_array args; + int i; + argv[1] = argv[0]; argv[0] = cmd = "help"; + + argv_array_init(&args); + for (i = 0; i < argc; i++) { + argv_array_push(&args, argv[i]); + if (!i) + argv_array_push(&args, "--command-only"); + } + + argc++; + argv = argv_array_detach(&args); } builtin = get_builtin(cmd);
The code does this after it:
if (builtin)
exit(run_builtin(...));
and returns. If we didn't get builtin, we risk leaking args.argv
here, but we assume argv[0] = cmd = "help" is always a builtin,
which I think is a safe assumption, so the code is OK. Static
checkers that are only half intelligent may yell at you for not
releasing the resources, though. I wonder if it is worth doing
static void handle_builtin(int argc, const char **argv)
{
struct argv_array args = ARGV_ARRAY_INIT;
...
if (argc > 1 && !strcmp(argv[1], "--help")) {
...
argv = args.argv;
}
builtin = get_builtin(cmd);
if (builtin)
exit(run_builtin(...));
argv_array_clear(&args);
}
to help unconfuse them.
By the way, I do not see these patches on gmane, public-inbox or
usual suspects. Perhaps vger is having a bad day or something?