Am 02.08.2018 um 16:21 schrieb Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason: > > On Thu, Aug 02 2018, René Scharfe wrote: > >> Am 02.08.2018 um 00:31 schrieb Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason: >>> But looking at this again it looks like this whole thing should just be >>> replaced by: >>> >>> diff --git a/builtin/push.c b/builtin/push.c >>> index 9cd8e8cd56..b8fa15c101 100644 >>> --- a/builtin/push.c >>> +++ b/builtin/push.c >>> @@ -558,9 +558,10 @@ int cmd_push(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix) >>> OPT_BIT( 0, "porcelain", &flags, N_("machine-readable output"), TRANSPORT_PUSH_PORCELAIN), >>> OPT_BIT('f', "force", &flags, N_("force updates"), TRANSPORT_PUSH_FORCE), >>> { OPTION_CALLBACK, >>> - 0, CAS_OPT_NAME, &cas, N_("refname>:<expect"), >>> + 0, CAS_OPT_NAME, &cas, N_("<refname>:<expect>"), >>> N_("require old value of ref to be at this value"), >>> - PARSE_OPT_OPTARG, parseopt_push_cas_option }, >>> + PARSE_OPT_OPTARG | PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP, >>> + parseopt_push_cas_option }, >>> { OPTION_CALLBACK, 0, "recurse-submodules", &recurse_submodules, "check|on-demand|no", >>> N_("control recursive pushing of submodules"), >>> PARSE_OPT_OPTARG, option_parse_recurse_submodules }, >>> >>> I.e. the reason this is confusing is because the code originally added >>> in 28f5d17611 ("remote.c: add command line option parser for >>> "--force-with-lease"", 2013-07-08) didn't use PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP, >>> which I also see is what read-tree etc. use already to not end up with >>> these double <>'s, see also 29f25d493c ("parse-options: add >>> PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP for complicated argh's", 2009-05-21). >> >> We could check if argh comes with its own angle brackets already and >> not add a second pair in that case, making PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP >> redundant in most cases, including the one above. Any downsides? >> Too magical? > > I'm more inclined to say that we should stop using > PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP in some of these cases, and change > "refname>:<expect" to "<refname>:<expect>" in push.c, so that the help > we emit is --force-with-lease[=<<refname>:<expect>>]. > > As noted in 29f25d493c this facility wasn't added with the intent > turning --refspec=<<refspec>> into --refspec=<refspec>, but to do stuff > like --option=<val1>[,<val2>] for options that take comma-delimited > options. > > If we're magically removing <>'s we have no consistent convention to > tell apart --opt=<a|b|c> meaning "one of a, b or c", --refspec=<refspec> > meaning "the literal string 'refspec'" and --refspec=<<refspec>> meaning > add a <refspec> string, i.e. fill in your refspec here. The notation for requiring a literal string is to use no special markers: --option=literal_string Alternatives can be grouped with parentheses: --option=(either|or) In both cases you'd need PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP. I haven't seen double angle brackets before in command line help strings. The commit message of 29f25d493c doesn't mention them either. A single pair is used to indicate that users need to fill in a value of a certain type: --refspec=<refspec> Multi-part options aren't special in this syntax: --force-with-lease=<refname>:<expect> NB: The "--refspec=" in the example before that is a literal string, so this is also already a multi-part option if you will. According to its manpage the option should rather be shown like this: --force-with-lease[=<refname>[:<expect>]] ... to indicate that all three forms are valid: --force-with-lease --force-with-lease=some_ref --force-with-lease=some_ref:but_not_this The current code doesn't allow that to be expressed, while it's possible with my patch. And nothing is removed -- you can specify as many angle brackets as you like, if that turns out to be useful; parseopt just won't add any more on top automatically anymore if you do that. Side note: The remaining user of PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP in builtin/update-index.c uses a slash for alternatives; we should probably use pipe instead: {OPTION_CALLBACK, 0, "chmod", &set_executable_bit, N_("(+/-)x"), N_("override the executable bit of the listed files"), PARSE_OPT_NONEG | PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP, chmod_callback}, René