Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] backfill: handle unexpected arguments

From: Derrick Stolee <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2026 19:01:33 -0400

On 3/22/26 1:32 AM, Siddharth Shrimali wrote:
> git backfill takes no non-option arguments. However, if extra
> arguments are passed with git backfill, parse_options() leaves
> them in argc and the command ignores them silently, giving the
> user no indication that something is wrong.

> @@ -135,6 +135,11 @@ int cmd_backfill(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix, struct reposit
>   
>   	argc = parse_options(argc, argv, prefix, options, builtin_backfill_usage,
>   			     0);
> +	
> +	if (argc) {
> +		error(_("unknown argument '%s'"), argv[0]);
> +		usage(builtin_backfill_usage[0]);
> +	}

Before we get too far into this: How does this interact with
the ongoing change to introduce revision arguments to 'git
backfill' [1]? I suppose that the important bit would be that
we still parse arguments using the revision walk machinery at
some point, but it would be difficult to guarantee that when
working on a patch disconnected from that series.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/

Thanks,
-Stolee