Inconsistencies in switch descriptions in online help

After going through the whole online help of Subversion, I had the feeling that it was intentionally planned, that a switch always has the same description, no matter for which command you use it. If necessary, the description of the command specifies the exact behaviour of the switch.
The big advantage of this approach is, that you can describe the general semantic of a switch without naming any commands.
I am currently preparing a cheat sheet for Subversion, that is designed like a big matrix with all the switches, its descriptions and its applicable commands, that would rely on that general rule.

However, there is one exception from this general rule: svn lock's -m and -F switches differ from all other -m and -F switches:

-m [--message] ARG : specify lock comment ARG
-F [--file] ARG : read lock comment from file ARG

differs from

 -m [--message] ARG : specify log message ARG
 -F [--file] ARG : read log message from file ARG

On the other hand, the description of the --force-log option, that is applicable to svn lock as well, always refers to log messages

--force-log : force validity of log message source

That might confuse users of the online help, because it is not clear which log message is meant in this context (above it was only spoken of lock messages).

Should the description of the --force-log message be changed for svn lock as well or should the -m and -F switch description be defined globally (and svn help lock will have an introducing sentence about the meaning of the -m and -F option)?

Regards

Johannes

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Received on Sat Nov 3 06:11:30 2007