From: Nelson Elhage To: Junio C Hamano Cc: git@vger.kernel.org Bcc: Subject: Re: [PATCH] git-push: Accept -n as a synonym for --dry-run. Reply-To: In-Reply-To: <7vfxar5zsi.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 07:44:29PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Sign-off? Signed-off-by: Nelson Elhage (I can resend the entire patch, but I'll resend with a new commit message if appropriate after any discussion plays itself out). > > Indeed -n is used in many places for --dry-run, but it is not _the_ > standard way. > > commit, push (as you identified), reflog, and send-email have --dry-run > but -n is not a synonym for it. Some of them even use -n as a shorthand > for a more often used option than --dry-run. Can you point to an example of a git command supporting --dry-run, and using -n for something else? I personally would find that confusing, since -n is a common alias for dry-run both inside and outside of git (c.f. make, rsync, libtool). I guess patch(1) has that property, but none of your examples from git use -n to mean something else. In fact, reflog already supports '-n' to mean dry-run, it's just not documented. I'll send along a documentation patch to fix that. I got the claim that -n was "standard" from parse-options.h, which defines OPT__DRY_RUN, which defines both -n and --dry-run switches at the same time. Given the number of commands that treat them as synonymous, I think it would be a win for UI consistency to make them synonymous everywhere. > > So the justification should be more like "push does not any other option > that deserves a short-and-sweet -n better, it will not have any such > option in the future, and --dry-run is very often used that it deserves to > use -n as its short-hand." > > I tend to agree with the first two points, but I am not sure about the > third point. Do people dry-push that often? I personally use --dry-run almost every time I push, which is what inspired this patch. Especially now that the push.default can change the behavior of push from repo to repo, I want to be sure I know what I'm about to push. The recent 'git push --confirm' thread suggests I am not the only person with this concern.