subcommand-specific options not considered harmful

Peter Davis <peter@pdavis.cx> writes:
> mkdir is the most obvious application, but since
> subcommand-specific options are a Bad Thing, well, hopefully I have solved
> that problem :)

I'd like to dispel this myth once and for all:

We didn't decide not to have subcommand-specific options.

What we decided was never to have the same option mean unrelated
things for different subcommands, or mean different things in global
context vs in a particular subcommand context (since we don't have
global vs local options).

The idea is to avoid lossage like CVS's various `-d' options.

It's perfectly okay to have an option that applies only to one
subcommand. By implication, however, you usually don't want to use up
a short option letter on such a rarely-used option, so

   $ svn mkdir --parents

is fine, but

   $ svn mkdir -p

probably is not.

This is not a comment any any specific proposal of Peter Davis's, I'm
just trying set the record straight about subcommands and options.

-K

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Received on Thu Oct 17 18:27:48 2002