On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 4:59 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> Another option would be to call 'usage' and be done.
>>
>> I had that idea as well, but I think pointing out the low level is better
>> than giving the high level again, so the user immediately sees what's wrong.
>
> I mean low level as in implementation detail. The human user would
> wonder "what is incompatible about them? Why are you stopping me from
> what I am trying to do?" Most likely the user was trying to do
> something other than specify a path, since they also passed --all. If
> I run something like
>
>
$ git submodule deinit force --all
error: unknown option `all'
usage: git submodule--helper list [--prefix=<path>] [<path>...]
--prefix <path> alternative anchor for relative paths
`force` is seen as the first pathspec, so "force --all" is given to the
`submodule--helper list`, which gives a less than optimal error message
$ git submodule deinit --all force
gettext: unrecognized option '--all and pathspec are incompatible'
Try 'gettext --help' for more information.
envsubst: unrecognized option '--all and pathspec are incompatible'
Try 'envsubst --help' for more information.
envsubst: unrecognized option '--all and pathspec are incompatible'
Try 'envsubst --help' for more information.
We should not put --all as the first thing in the error message.
$ git submodule deinit --all force
pathspec and --all are incompatible
With the next patch this is the error message. I think the missing
dashes for force are quite visible as force is after --all.
>
> and the output tells me that --all and pathspec are incompatible then
> I just scratch my head more.
>
> We can do
>
> USAGE="$dashless [--quiet] deinit [-f|--force] (--all | [--] <path>...)"
> usage
>
> to print the subcommand's usage. git commandline tools don't
> translate any usage strings today, so not getting translation here
> wouldn't feel out of place.
We can have both? I'd prefer not rewriting the USAGE string here
as it would easily be out of sync in the future?
I tried to just grep the deinit line from the USAGe though, but that doesn't
look right as it would need some post processing. (remove the "or:")
and processing the USAGE string also doesn't sound future proof.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html