On 03/07/13 at 02:51pm, Allan McRae wrote: > On 07/03/13 06:31, Dan McGee wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 2:19 PM, William Giokas <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 02:03:14AM +0100, Sébastien Luttringer wrote: > >>> The main (only) purpose of -D is to be able to change packages > >>> installation > >>> status (deps or explicit). Having a short form offer a similar experience > >>> that > >>> other main pacman option (e.g. Su). > >>> > >>> Signed-off-by: Sébastien Luttringer <[email protected]> > >> > >> The --asdeps option for -S and -U does not have a shortopt. In my > >> worthess opinion, this is a bad idea, as -d for those operations is > >> --nodeps. > > > > This was my thought as well. If we are willing to use a shortopt, it > > should apply to ALL top-level operations in the same fashion (or be > > rejected completely), and not mislead. -Q/--query match this criteria, > > but currently -d for -U/-S would be totally unexpected. So -1 from me. > > > > I have consciously made decisions over the past 3 years to not add new > > shortopts unless they are universally applicable, so this would be a > > step against that. If we were to do this, we would want to remove the > > -d shortopt for --nodeps in the next release, and then add these in > > the following release. However, this is cumbersome as `--nodeps > > --nodeps` is really silly to type out as we allow this option to be > > passed twice for even more dep-ignoring behavior. > > > > I made the decision to take this based on: > > 1) it would be good to have a short options > 2) the short letters made sense > 3) the current usage of -d/-e in -Q is fairly similar > 4) the current usage of -d in -S is an operation that is unrelated to -D > so will not cause confusion. > > > People manage to understand that -Sd is different from -Qd. Why the > need to enforce consistency when there is already none? > > Allan
I think that the problem is not just that -d means different things for different operations, but that --asdeps and --asexplicit shorten differently based on the operation. A user would likely see that --asdeps shortens to -d with -D and assume it to do the same for -S because --asdeps is a valid option there too. A short option may mean different things for different operations, but all operations that accept a particular long option should use the same short option for it. apg
