cvs commit: src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/add main.c pkg_add.1 src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/create main.c pkg_create.1 src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/delete main.c pkg_delete.1 src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/info main.c pkg_info.1 ...

[Florent Thoumie]

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Coleman Kane <cokane at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-05-30 at 12:58 -0700, Maxim Sobolev wrote:
>> I am curious what is our policy on using long options in the base system
>> (if any)? I believe that pkg_install is the first non-contributed base
>> system utility to actually widely use it. For some reason I've got
>> impression that use of getopt_long is considered "the Linux/GNU way",
>> this API provided for compatibility purposes and its use in base system
>> is discouraged. Quick grep through /use/src seemingly supports that.
>>
>> Can someone confirm/reject?
>
> I am not sure about policy, however I do appreciate the long options
> sometimes. Primarily, I think they are useful (in a self-documenting
> way) for use in shell scripts. I tend to prefer the single-char options
> when I am doing the administration myself.

I'm not aware of such policy.

I think they're useful because as far as pkg_install is concerned, we
are using single-char options that are hard to match to the action
it's doing. Here are a couple examples:

- pkg_create -h doesn't call usage() because it's already taken.
- it's easy to confuse pkg_info -o and pkg_info -O.

I'll back it out if general consensus is that long options should be avoided.

-- 
Florent Thoumie
flz at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD Committer