On Jun 23 10:11, Ben Lindstrom wrote:
> On Jun 23, 2014, at 5:48 AM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I can argue that man pages are absent at least on Windows, but it does
> > not matter here, because comparing manual with command line help is
> > wrong.
>
> That would be an issue you should take up with the whomever packaged your ssh for windows.
>
> > In other words --help option is not a replacement for a full doc and it is
> > not meant to provide detailed information about software. However, it
> > provides a useful reference for most used options. See git for example,
> > which provides both.
>
> The issue with this is two fold:
>
> 1. Keep the documentation up in two places is more painful than one.
> 2. Attempting to sum up a lot of the ssh options via one-liners becomes pretty hard as even a paragraph or two in the manage doesn't always fully explain the minor ticks that may burn you if you aren't reading carefully.
In a somewhat twisted way, --help already works ;-)
$ scp --help
scp: unknown option -- -
usage: scp [-12346BCpqrv] [-c cipher] [-F ssh_config] [-i identity_file]
[-l limit] [-o ssh_option] [-P port] [-S program]
[[user@]host1:]file1 ... [[user@]host2:]file2
As for one-liner help output, we already have two noticable exceptions
from this rule:
$ ssh-agent --help
ssh-agent: unknown option -- -
usage: ssh-agent [options] [command [arg ...]]
Options:
-c Generate C-shell commands on stdout.
-s Generate Bourne shell commands on stdout.
-k Kill the current agent.
-d Debug mode.
-a socket Bind agent socket to given name.
-t life Default identity lifetime (seconds).
$ ssh-keygen --help
ssh-keygen: unknown option -- -
usage: ssh-keygen [options]
Options:
-A Generate non-existent host keys for all key types.
-a number Number of KDF rounds for new key format or moduli primality tests.
-B Show bubblebabble digest of key file.
-b bits Number of bits in the key to create.
[...]
Whatever you guys think about this kind of help output, from my point of
view the more helpful(!) help output of ssh-keygen was often a
life-saver. Also, a more helpful help output is still a *lot* faster
over a slow remote connection than having to call `man'. And sometimes
man pages aren't even installed on systems with tight filesystems.
Just my 2ct,
Corinna
--
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Maintainer
Red Hat
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