Jeff King <p...@peff.net> writes: > <shrug> It seems weird and inconsistent to me that the meaning of "-h" > depends on the position and presence of other unrelated options. Maybe > it's just me. I know _why_ it's that way, but this seems like one of > those weird corners of the interface that end up confusing people and > giving Git's interface the reputation of being full of mysterious > inconsistencies. I suspect one of the reasons nobody has complained > about it is that "ls-remote" is not commonly used, and "ls-remote -h" > less so (I didn't even know it was there until this conversation).
Technically, yes, it may be weird. I may be biased as every time I think about this one, the first one that comes to my mind is how "grep -h" (not "git grep", but GNU grep) behaves. Yes, "-h" means something else, but by itself, the command does not make sense, and "ls-remote -h" is an exception to the rule: most sane commands do not have a sensible semantics when they take only "-h" and nothing else. And even for ls-remote it is true only when you try to be extra lazy and do not say which remote you are asking. And that is why I think "'cmd -h" and nothing else consistently gives help" may overall be positive in usability, than a rule that says "'cmd -h' is for short-help unless -h means something else for the command".
