Hi Ævar,
Le 2021-07-15 à 12:16, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason a écrit :
I'm a bit biased here since I like --recursive better, but let's not
drag that whole argument up again. I don't find the argument in
bb62e0a99fc (clone: teach --recurse-submodules to optionally take a
pathspec, 2017-03-17) convincing enough to have moved such a prominent
use-case to a longer option name.
But, water under the bridge. Aside from that:
For me a Google search for "git clone --recursive" is ~40k results, but
"git clone --recurse-submodules". The former links to various
discussions/docs/stackoverflow answers, often --recurse-submodules isn't
mentioned at all or as an aside.
I think it's unfortunate that we:
1. Conflate whether something shows up in completion v.s. the
help. Given its prominence and that "git clone -h" is ~50 lines why
not note --recursive there.
As far as I understand (and tested), '--recursive' was listed in the short help but not the completion
before bb62e0a99f (clone: teach --recurse-submodules to optionally take a pathspec,
2017-03-17). At the time the completion did not use '--git-completion-helper'
and only '--recurse-submodules' was listed (since 5f072e0017 (completion: add option
'--recurse-submodules' to 'git clone', 2016-07-27)).
Starting from bb62e0a99f, it was not listed in the short help (because of PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN)
nor the completion (because it was still not listed).
Then starting from 5c387428f1 (parse-options: don't emit "ambiguous option"
for aliases, 2019-04-29), it started being listed in the short help AND
the completion again; in the short help because of the new code in usage_with_options_internal
and in the completion because of the way preprocess_options is implemented,
and at that time '--git-completion-helper' was used for '_git_clone'.
After my patch, it would still be listed in the short help, as "alias of --recurse-submodules",
but would not be listed by the completion (unless GIT_COMPLETION_SHOW_ALL is set).
2. Don't have the completion aware of these aliases, i.e. "git clone
--rec<TAB>" before your chance offers a completion of both, that sucks,
we should fully complete the non-alias instead.
Indeed. That's my main motivation.
3. Making it PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN "solves" #2 at the cost of hiding it in
"git help -h", and now this won't work, but did before:
git clone --recursi<TAB>
I.e. even if we didn't want to do #2 *and* wanted to hide it in the
usage output surely completing an unmbigous prefix is better, even
if it's a hidden option?
I agree that with my patch 'git clone --recursi<TAB>' does not complete to '--recursive'
(unless you've set GIT_COMPLETION_SHOW_ALL). But I'm not sure it's that big of
a deal (after all if you typed this far you only have two letters left :P)
But '--rec' will be sufficient to complete to '--recurse-submoduele', so
it's even less letters to type.
But this has nothing to do with PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN ('--recurse-submodules' is
not hidden and aliases are not hidden either). So I'm not sure what you mean...
Per-se none of this is a blocker or "we must fix this first" for this
particular change, we have this in many existing cases.
I daresay there's no other alias that's in as wide a use in the wild, so
we should think about this one particularly carefully though.
It's not fully clear from your commit message which of 1-3 you're aiming
for, I think it's more of the "discourage its use".
As I wrote it's mainly #2, I'll update the commit message to be clearer.
Sure, fair enough, but PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN is not a 1=1 mapping to that,
and can often lead to more user confusion.
E.g. the user has used --recursive for years, but can't even find it in
-h (I also think it's a mistake to have entirely removed it from the
docs, even if one agrees with its "deprecation" I'd say we should keep
some "used to be called --recursive" note there).
Yeah, maybe it should have stayed in the docs. Again, my patch does not remove
it from the short help.
Thanks for you comments!:)
Philippe.
