Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > And I think this has to be stderr. We're polluting the output of the > aliased command with our extra message, so we have two choices: > > 1. Pollute stderr, and risk copious stdout (or a pager) scrolling it > off the screen. > > 2. Pollute stdout, at which point our message may be confused as part > of the actual output of the command (and that may not even be > immediately noticed if it is passed through a shell pipeline or > into a file). > > Choice (2) seems like a regression to me. Choice (1) is unfortunate in > some cases, but is no worse than today's behavior. I think the output of "git foo -h" changing (i.e. has "aliased to..." message in front) is about the same degree of regression as "git foo --help" no longer giving "aliased to..." information anywhere, though. >> Even the first two "better" cases share the same glitch if the "foo >> ... >> thing to do is to >> >> $ git unknown-command -h >&2 | less >> >> And at that point, it does not matter which between the standard >> output and the standard error streams we write "unknown-command is >> aliased to ...". > > Yeah. I think if "git foo -h" produces a bunch of output you didn't > expect, then "git help foo" or "git foo --help" may be the next thing > you reach for. That's not so different than running the command even > without any aliases involved. Hmmm. With the "teach 'git foo -h' to output 'foo is aliased to bar' to the standard error before running 'git bar -h'", plus "'git foo --help' now goes straight to 'git bar --help'", "git foo --help" no longer tells us that foo is aliased to bar. Presumably "git help foo" will still give "foo is bar" and stop?
