Re: [PATCH v2 3/6] parse-options: stop supporting "" in the usagestr array

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  [off-list ref] writes:

The strings in the the "usagestr" array have special handling for the
empty string dating back to f389c808b67 (Rework make_usage to print
the usage message immediately, 2007-10-14).

We'll prefix all strings after the first one with "or: ". Then if we
encountered a "" we'll emit all strings after that point verbatim
without any "or: " prefixing.

This gets rid of that special case, which was added in
f389c808b67 (Rework make_usage to print the usage message immediately,
2007-10-14). It was only used "blame" (the "credential-cache*" use of

used *by* "blame"

it was removed in the preceding commit). Before this change we'd emit:

    $ git blame -h
    usage: git blame [<options>] [<rev-opts>] [<rev>] [--] <file>

        <rev-opts> are documented in git-rev-list(1)

The most crucial information is missing.  It may be shared with the
previous step but it is even worse in this step.

Why is this loss of feature a desirable thing in the first place?

What are we gaining by breaking the "after listing the alternative
forms concatenated with 'or:', we can give a general description,
before going onto the list of options"?

Without that explained, the remainder of the proposed log message
reads more like an excuse for breaking the feature, justifying that
the loss of feature can be worked around, than the description of a
solution.

Thanks.