Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > 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). Yup. It shows that I did not know (or remember) about LIT-ARGH when I wrote it (the line stayed in the same shape since its introduction to the codebase), and I did not know (or remember) when I sent this patch. The above is the best solution to my puzzlement within the framework of the current codebase. >> 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>>]. I fail to see why the outermost <> pair could be a good idea. Without them, i.e. in what the current output shows, I can see <refname> and <expect> are something that I should supply real values (i.e. placeholders) and I should have a colon (literal) in between them. It is an established convention that a token enclosed in a <> pair is a placeholder. But I am not sure what you mean by <<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. There is no --refspec=<<refspec>> to begin with. A single placeholder can be written in the source as "refspec" and shown as "--refspec=<refspec>" because you get the surrounding <> pair for free by default. Nobody would want to write "<refspec>" in the arg help, as most of the option arguments are a single value placeholder. But if you want "<val1>[,<val2>]" in the final output, you do *not* want surrounding <> pair, so you use the option and write everythnig manually in the source without magic. Or are you saying that we should consistently write surrounding "<>" to all placeholders, and stop special casing single-token ones? IOW, get rid of literal-arghelp and instead make that the default? > 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. Ah, this is where you are off-by-one. "--refspec=<refspec>" means "give your refspec as its value".