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Re: Add help text for extensions in svn 1.4

From: Karl Fogel <kfogel_at_google.com>
Date: 2006-07-31 22:15:36 CEST

"Lieven Govaerts" <lgo@mobsol.be> writes:
> subversion 1.4 introduced some new extensions for diff, blame and merge (-x
> args). More specifically args '-b [--ignore-space-change]', '-w
> [--ignore-all-space]' and '--ignore-eol-style'.
>
> Attached patch will document these extensions for the command-line client.
> The layout isn't ideal, but I think it's as good as possible. Please verify
> if the text is correct.
>
> This patch should have been in the 1.4 release, too bad I didn't find time
> before RC4 was released.

I'm a bit confused by the new help text, and by the semantics of -x in
general...

When passing options through to an external diff-cmd, we shouldn't be
interpreting the options at all -- they are opaque strings that we
pass along to some external program we're firing up, end of story. So
for that circumstance, the help text can't claim to know any of the
meanings of the sub-options.

When giving the user a way to change the behavior of our *internal*
diff-cmd implementation, well, -x seems like an odd way to do that,
but if we *are* going to use -x to do that, then the help text should
make it clear that we're only talking about our internal diff
implementation, Your Mileage May Vary, etc :-).

Independently of the above, I'd recommend using parens instead of
square brackets, since the square brackets imply an optional param,
not an alternate name for an option.

-Karl

> regards,
>
> Lieven.
>
> [[[
> Add the help text for the new extensions added in 1.4:
> '-b [--ignore-space-change]', '-w [--ignore-all-space]' and
> '--ignore-eol-style'.
>
> * subversion/svn/main.c
> (svn_cl__options): add description of the extensions.
> ]]]
>
>
> Index: subversion/svn/main.c
> ===================================================================
> --- subversion/svn/main.c (revision 20915)
> +++ subversion/svn/main.c (working copy)
> @@ -98,7 +98,25 @@
> N_("specify a password ARG")},
> #ifndef AS400
> {"extensions", 'x', 1,
> - N_("pass ARG to --diff-cmd as options (default: '-u')")},
> + N_("pass ARG to --diff-cmd as options (default: '-u')\n"
> + " "
> + " An extension argument can be one of:\n"
> + " "
> + " -u [--unified]:\n"
> + " "
> + " Output 3 lines of unified context.\n"
> + " "
> + " -b [--ignore-space-change]:\n"
> + " "
> + " Ignore changes in the amount of white space.\n"
> + " "
> + " -w [--ignore-all-space]:\n"
> + " "
> + " Ignore all white space.\n"
> + " "
> + " --ignore-eol-style:\n"
> + " "
> + " Ignore changes in EOL style")},
> #endif
> {"targets", svn_cl__targets_opt, 1,
> N_("pass contents of file ARG as additional args")},
>
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Received on Mon Jul 31 22:16:32 2006

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