Subject: Re: [PATCH] commit: Add -f, --fixes <commit> option to add Fixes: line

From: Thomas Rast <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 09:09:32 +0100

Josh Triplett <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 06:42:44AM +0100, Michael Haggerty wrote:
>> But I don't think that this feature should be given the "-f" short
>> option, as (a) -f often means "force"; (b) it will increase the
>> confusion with --fixup; (c) it just doesn't strike me as being likely to
>> be such a frequently-used option (though if this changes over time the
>> "-f" option could always be granted to it later).
>
> (a) -n often means --dry-run, but for commit it means --no-verify.
> Different commands have different options, and commit doesn't have a
> --force to abbreviate as -f.
>
> (b) If anything, I think the existence of a short option will make the
> distinction more obvious, since -f and --fixup are much less similar
> than --fixes and --fixup.  Most users will never type --fixes, making
> confusion unlikely.
>
> (c) Short option letters tend to be first-come first-serve unless
> there's a strong reason to do otherwise.  Why reserve 'f' for some
> hypothetical future option that doesn't exist yet?

No, lately the direction in Git has been to avoid giving options a
one-letter shorthand until they have proven so useful that people using
it in the wild start to suggest that it should have one.

See e.g.

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/233998
  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/168748

A much better argument would be if it was already clear from the specs
laid out for Fixes that n% of the kernel commits will end up having this
footer, and thus kernel hackers will spend x amount of time spelling out
--fixes and/or confusing it with --fixup to much headache.

-- 
Thomas Rast
[email-masked]