@matheusbsbs / matheus-bagliano / commits / 1bc1e94091

doc: option value may be separate for valid reasons

Even though `git help cli` recommends users to prefer using "--option=value" over "--option value", there can be reasons why giving them separately is a good idea. One reason is that shells do not perform tilde expansion for `--option=~/path/name` but they expand `--options ~/path/name` just fine. This is not a problem for many options whose option parsing is properly written using OPT_FILENAME(), because the value given to OPT_FILENAME() is tilde-expanded internally by us, but some commands take a pathname as a mere string, which needs this trick to have the shell help us. I think the reason we originally decided to recommend the stuck form was because an option that takes an optional value requires you to use it in the stuck form, and it is one less thing for users to worry about if they get into the habit to always use the stuck form. But we should be discouraging ourselves from adding an option with an optional value in the first place, and we might want to weaken the current recommendation. In any case, let's describe this one case where it is necessary to use the separate form, with an example. Reviewed-by: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Junio C Hamano committed Nov 25, 2024 at 12:14 UTC 1bc1e940918cd44cc78bff1dfd518e16fc5bad57

2 files changed +15

Documentation/gitcli.txt

@@ -90,6 +90,15 @@ scripting Git:

90 for long options. An option that takes optional option-argument must be

91 written in the 'stuck' form.

93 + * Despite the above suggestion, when Arg is a path relative to the

94 + home directory of a user, e.g. ~/directory/file or ~u/d/f, you

95 + may want to use the separate form, e.g. `git foo --file ~/mine`,

96 + not `git foo --file=~/mine`. The shell will expand `~/` in the

97 + former to your home directory, but most shells keep the tilde in

98 + the latter. Some of our commands know how to tilde-expand the

99 + option value even when given in the stuck form, but not all of

100 + them do.

101 +

102 * When you give a revision parameter to a command, make sure the parameter is

103 not ambiguous with a name of a file in the work tree. E.g. do not write

104 `git log -1 HEAD` but write `git log -1 HEAD --`; the former will not work

Documentation/gitcredentials.txt

@@ -242,6 +242,12 @@ Here are some example specifications:

242 [credential]

243 helper = "foo --bar='whitespace arg'"

244

245 +# store helper (discouraged) with custom location for the db file;

246 +# use `--file ~/.git-secret.txt`, rather than `--file=~/.git-secret.txt`,

247 +# to allow the shell to expand tilde to the home directory.

248 +[credential]

249 + helper = "store --file ~/.git-secret.txt"

250 +

251 # you can also use an absolute path, which will not use the git wrapper

252 [credential]

253 helper = "/path/to/my/helper --with-arguments"