cvs commit: src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/add main.c pkg_add.1 src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/create main.c pkg_create.1 src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/delete main.c pkg_delete.1 src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/info main.c pkg_info.1 ...

[Coleman Kane]

On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 04:18 +0000, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 04:18:23PM +0100, Florent Thoumie wrote:
> > On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Coleman Kane <cokane at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2008-05-30 at 12:58 -0700, Maxim Sobolev wrote:
> > >> I am curious what is our policy on using long options in the base system
> > >> (if any)? I believe that pkg_install is the first non-contributed base
> > >> system utility to actually widely use it. For some reason I've got
> > >> impression that use of getopt_long is considered "the Linux/GNU way",
> > >> this API provided for compatibility purposes and its use in base system
> > >> is discouraged. Quick grep through /use/src seemingly supports that.
> > >>
> > >> Can someone confirm/reject?
> > >
> > > I am not sure about policy, however I do appreciate the long options
> > > sometimes. Primarily, I think they are useful (in a self-documenting
> > > way) for use in shell scripts. I tend to prefer the single-char options
> > > when I am doing the administration myself.
> > 
> > I'm not aware of such policy.
> > 
> > I think they're useful because as far as pkg_install is concerned, we
> > are using single-char options that are hard to match to the action
> > it's doing. Here are a couple examples:
> > 
> > - pkg_create -h doesn't call usage() because it's already taken.
> > - it's easy to confuse pkg_info -o and pkg_info -O.
> > 
> > I'll back it out if general consensus is that long options should be avoided.
> 
> I'd rather avoid long options in *BSD utilities.  They're hard to
> remember, easy to confuse, while not really gaining us anything useful
> (IMHO of course).
> 
> ./danfe
> 

Short options aren't going away, nor should they. So if you can't
remember them, then you can rest assured that you won't have to.

-- 
Coleman Kane
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