> > apt-get --help should report all the various options that apt supports, > > tersely is fine, but nothing should be missing. > > In total there are something like over 50 different options (if you only > count the raw options and not their permutations) that can be accepted by > the apt-get program, I have decided to document only the short options and > refer the user to the man pages for the more obscure options.
I'd still rather see them all listed; people can use `more' if the want to scroll through slowly. ;) Certainly counting permutations is not useful; the point is to list all the options, not every possible usage pattern of the program. But standard GNU coding practice is to list them all, which is why apt-get confused me. If you don't want to list them all, it would be very very nice if instead you added a comment to the output saying that the list is incomplete and where to look for the complete list.
