Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:
Remko Lodder wrote:
On Tue, June 3, 2008 5:18 pm, Florent Thoumie wrote:
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Coleman Kane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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 like the change (long opts).
+1
I don't see why we should abandon something that is convenient for our
users just because Linux does it.
Apart from the BSD vs. GNU way, I think it's mistake that long
"synonyms" have been added to existing options. The reason for that is
because this is likely to promote creating superfluously incompatible
scripts/software that relies on pkg_install, as developer who develops
on say 8.0 may not be aware of the fact that in previous releases those
long options were not existing.
IMHO, long options is mostly for script writers (for whom it's harmful
in this case according to the above). It adds no convenience for a CLI
user. Except of maybe one or two options that one uses every day nobody
can really remember what world to use without looking into the man page
anyway (at which point short option wins since it's easier to type).
Maybe I am old school, but for me for example remembering `-L' in wget
it much easier than remembering `--relative'.
-Maxim
_______________________________________________
cvs-all@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/cvs-all
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
