Jonas Konrad noticed[*] that "git branch -h" started showing the help text to the standard error stream. It turns out that we are fairly inconsistent in our implementation of "git cmd -h". The users of parse-options API will get "If -h is the only option on the command line, give the help text to the standard output" for free, but some commands manually check for the condition and then call the usage_with_options() function, which gives the identical help text to the standard error stream. And "git branch -h" Jonas noticed was one of them. Older commands written before parse-options API became dominant show the help text by calling the usage() function, which is meant to be used when they fail to parse their command line arguments, which has the same problem. An explicit request for help text "git cmd -h" should be fulfilled by showing the help on the standard output. This series teachs "git $cmd -h" to send its help text to the standard output stream consistently for built-in commands. There is a related "what status should these command exit with?" question, and an argument can be made to switch them to exit with 0, instead of historical 129, but it is left outside of the series for now. Changes since v3: - The helper functions for usage_with_options() and usage() are renamed to show_usage_with_options_if_asked() and show_usage_if_asked(), respectively. - The call to usage() in builtin/fetch-pack.c turns out to be the same class as builtin/var.c that simply treats "-h" as an unrecognised command line option. The fix was rewritten to follow the pattern taken to fix "git var -h" and moved to the "oddball" step. - The patches are reordered; the first three patches prepare the new helper functions and ways to test their effect, and the remaining patches convert the commands to use the new helper functions. [Reference] https://lore.kernel.org/git/04cfaa3b-847f-4850-9dd6-c1cf9f72807f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ Jeff King (1): t0012: optionally check that "-h" output goes to stdout Junio C Hamano (5): parse-options: add show_usage_with_options_if_asked() usage: add show_usage_if_asked() builtins: send usage_with_options() help text to standard output oddballs: send usage() help text to standard output builtin: send usage() help text to standard output builtin/am.c | 3 +-- builtin/branch.c | 4 ++-- builtin/check-ref-format.c | 4 ++-- builtin/checkout--worker.c | 6 +++--- builtin/checkout-index.c | 6 +++--- builtin/commit-tree.c | 4 ++-- builtin/commit.c | 8 ++++---- builtin/credential.c | 3 ++- builtin/diff-files.c | 3 +-- builtin/diff-index.c | 3 +-- builtin/diff-tree.c | 3 +-- builtin/fast-import.c | 3 +-- builtin/fetch-pack.c | 2 ++ builtin/fsmonitor--daemon.c | 4 ++-- builtin/gc.c | 4 ++-- builtin/get-tar-commit-id.c | 4 +++- builtin/index-pack.c | 3 +-- builtin/ls-files.c | 4 ++-- builtin/mailsplit.c | 4 ++-- builtin/merge-index.c | 7 ++++++- builtin/merge-ours.c | 3 +-- builtin/merge-recursive.c | 6 ++++++ builtin/merge.c | 4 ++-- builtin/pack-redundant.c | 3 +-- builtin/rebase.c | 6 +++--- builtin/remote-ext.c | 2 ++ builtin/remote-fd.c | 1 + builtin/rev-list.c | 3 +-- builtin/rev-parse.c | 2 ++ builtin/unpack-file.c | 8 ++++++-- builtin/unpack-objects.c | 2 ++ builtin/update-index.c | 4 ++-- builtin/upload-archive.c | 6 +++--- builtin/var.c | 1 + git-compat-util.h | 2 ++ parse-options.c | 10 ++++++++++ parse-options.h | 4 ++++ t/helper/test-simple-ipc.c | 4 ++-- t/t0012-help.sh | 3 ++- t/t7600-merge.sh | 2 +- usage.c | 28 +++++++++++++++++++++++++--- 41 files changed, 122 insertions(+), 64 deletions(-) -- 2.48.1-191-gafe818080f
