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Re: Passing unused opts to every command considered harmful

From: Branko Čibej <brane_at_xbc.nu>
Date: 2007-12-17 07:09:46 CET

Brian W. Fitzpatrick wrote:
> While updating the reference chapter of the Subversion Book, I
> discovered that suddenly *every* command has grown --username and
> --password options. While some commands may now need authn for merge
> tracking, I found it odd that *every* command did. A little rooting
> around led me to this gem:
>
> /* Options that apply to all commands. (While not every command may
> currently require authentication or be interactive, allowing every
> command to take these arguments allows scripts to just pass them
> willy-nilly to every invocation of 'svn') . */
>
> I will strongly resist every urge to be a poisonous person here, but
> can someone please tell me why we should confuse millions of users
> just to make life easier for scripts to pass things "willy-nilly" into
> our Subversion client?
>
> I cannot believe that people find this to be acceptable. We're
> putting developers first here, and users second.
>

This looks like another ass-backw^W^Wunfortunate UI design decision. We
used to be able to filter out such warts before they reached code.
What's gone wrong?

-- Brane

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Received on Mon Dec 17 07:10:01 2007

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