On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 4:00 PM Guido van Rossum <gu...@python.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 2:16 PM Serhiy Storchaka <storch...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> The output of "python -h" is 104 lines long now. It was only 51 lines in >> 3.6. 35% of it is about the -X option, and 30% about environment >> variables. Also some lines in the -X option description are too long >> (102 columns). Both topics are "advanced" and mostly interested for >> debugging. I suggest to move them out of the main help output. >> > > Sounds like a good plan. > > >> The are two options: >> >> 1. Move it to pydoc topics. The advantage is that it is a standard way, >> there are already 88 topics. The disadvantage is that this information >> will be not available in "minimal" installations of Python which do not >> include docs. >> >> 2. Add command-line options like -hX and -henv. The information will >> always be available with the interpreter, but the interface is special. >> > > For -X, I suggest we could output the following line: > > -X opt : implementation-specific option; use -X help to list options. > +1 from me. > > We could also see if we can put the help text for each of the supported -X > flags in the table defining these flags (sorry, I can't recall where it > lives, but I'm pretty sure I've seen such a table.) > > For env vars I think moving this to pydoc is fine; I don't think we have a > process or mechanism that ensures the docs for env vars are even complete. > (We don't have one for the flags either, but somehow I find it hard to > conceive of someone adding a new command line flag without them or someone > else involved in the code review thinking of updating the help text. But I > find it quite conceivable that someone adds a new env var used only in a > corner case without anyone thinking to update the docs. And I presume that > the -E flag isn't honored 100% of the time either.) > > But I wouldn't object to a -h sub-option that lists environment vars > either. > I think an option to `-h` for environment variables is also good as that command can be the generic `-h` output as well without resorting to needing to run Python code like pydoc to get at more help.
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