Passing unused opts to every command considered harmful

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.

-FItz

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Received on Mon Dec 17 05:47:46 2007